Ugh! Did you say GRAMMAR!!!!
Grammar is never fun to teach, but it's incredibly difficult to help students fix problems in their writing if they don't have a basic understanding of how it all works. Right? For a long time I struggled with explanations, but my students weren't getting any better. How could they figure out where to put commas if they didn't know what a compound sentence was or an introductory dependent clause? How could they make subjects and verbs agree if they couldn't even find the subject?
To save my sanity (and theirs) I created some short, easy minilessons to review basic grammar for my ninth grade students. Since they were coming to me from two different middle schools and several different teachers, I never could be sure what they had or hadn't been taught. So I decided that I really needed to just start from the beginning.
I dusted off my grammar books and went all the way back to the eight parts of speech. You would not believe the moaning and the groaning and the "We already know this" whining that I got. But guess what? They didn't really know it very well at all. Some of the worst grades I got were on the eight parts of speech quiz.
The minilessons didn't take a lot of time...just about 10-15 minutes a day. We went step by step in a logical manner. And guess what? My students would tell me....this is the first time I ever understood how it all went together.
So...if you've experienced something like this, check out my Direct Grammar Review Minilessons. They cover the following skills:
identifying the eight parts of speech
identifying the parts of a sentence
subject-verb agreement (includes parallel structure and wordiness/redundancy)
clauses and sentence structure
There are enough lessons to last a semester. If you're on a block schedule, that may be all you can cover for the school year. If you are on a year-long schedule, the second semester is a great time to cover some grammar in context skills. You might want to try my On Target Grammar and Vocabulary Skills in Context.
For the grammar review minis, you can use the whole bundle or you can pick and choose those areas your students seem to have the most trouble with. Keep in mind, this is intended as a REVIEW, so your students should not be encountering these for the very first time with these lessons. That is why they are so short. These lessons are also cumulative, meaning when students are looking for the parts of a sentence, they should already be very familiar with the parts of speech. They are in the order they are in for a reason. The lessons give a logical, step by step progression into an understanding of how grammar works.
By the way, these make great bellringers for the beginning of class.
I hope these lessons help you and your students have a better understanding of grammar and how a command of grammar helps to improve their writing.
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