If you could teach grammar, what one thing would you do to make it more interesting?

I teach 3rd grade and I came up with a cute activity that my students LOVE! Whatever we're learning in grammar, (noun, verb, pronoun, etc...) I turn on the radio. (Songs WITHOUT bad words, of course)...while they are singing along they have to make a list of the nouns (or whatever it is that day) that they heard in the song. Then we discuss/ellaborate, etc. about why it is a noun or whatever .... THEY LOVE THIS!

Parts of Speech Bingo! My students love it! Mad Libs also work and students love to share them out loud with the class to see who has the funniest. :-)

Bring in video clips demonstrating incorrect grammar and let the students identify and discuss. -MM

i truly dont think its possible. grammar in itself is dry and boring. the only way to get thru it is to sludge thru it unless maybe you could arrange it where your students can interact with other people like a grammar test and ask them to evaluate others grammar...?

Young students love to see how teaching relates to everyday life. One of the techniques that I have used in the classroom is the newspaper. You would be surprised how many times the news gets it WRONG. The want ads are a classic place for these mistakes because no one edits the want ads. Let your students find these humorous mistakes. It will make the lesson much more entertaining and will reinforce your textbook teachings. Good luck

you just have to join your grammar objectives with your communicative approach methodolgy. there is a real world situation or task for any given grammar lesson. eg. likes and dislikes ( infinative and present continuous) what people did this week ( simple past), stories about a long time ago..( past perfect continuous), giving a police description ( adjectives or comparative and superlative degrees) etc.

I will tell you from personal experience that my grammar teachers were awful and I never learned grammar well until I got to 10th grade. My 10th grade English teacher kept things very organized and clear. So now that I teach ESL to 5th and 6th graders, I try to do the same thing. The other English teachers at my school skip around the various topics, but I keep things together. For example, I start with parts of speech; we go through all of 8 of them starting with the easiest - nouns. Nouns are very concrete, at least to begin with. Then we go through all the noun topics in order from easiest to most difficult - 1st what is a noun (person, place, thing, idea), 2nd common and proper nouns (common names any noun, proper names specific nouns), 3rd singular and plural nouns, 4th possessive nouns. Of course, you'll want to talk about what all these things are, have practice activities including worksheets. But having some speaking and writing activities (especially for ESL's) can be beneficial. Keeping your scope and sequence in order like this keeps things in context. Also, with the ESLs, be sure to compare English rules to their home language rules to point out similarities and differences. As far as cool activities, I use a lot of index cards and markers to make quick games - very inexpensive, but effective. Then we play "sorting games" or "matching games;" whatever works with the topic at hand. For example, nouns can be person, place, thing, or idea. So write examples of several of these onto the cards, one word per card, then have the kids sort them into categories. Same with adjectives - tells what kind, how many, which one - so write examples of these on the cards, then have them sort them by the categories. Here's some matching ideas - match a proper noun to a common noun - so make cards with example pairs (Detroit - city, Alice - girl), then have them match the cards. Another, match the subject pronoun to the object pronoun (I - me, they - them, we - us). This also appeals to students who like "hands-on" activities. A couple of other things - I have found a lot of really cool manipulatives, like at walmart, I found some word tiles and the tiles are different colors according to parts of speech (nouns are blue, verbs are red). With something like this, you can make up little games - like each student draws a tile from each color and tries to make up a sentence with the words. I have also found some parts of speech bingo games. Sorry, I don't mean to focus on parts of speech, but that's what it's mainly about, right? I have also found synonym/antonym bingo, prefix/suffix/root word tiles. Good luck to you.

If the kids aren't paying attention too you,, Dress up in a silly outfit. not like a outfit that will make them think that you have gone mental.. but one that would be i can't keep my eyes off you it looks so hideous! Or for the lower grades if your class is before recess then say if everyone gets a grammar question right.. then i will let you go to recess early. If you think about it for a while you can make it fun. With Spanish, You could cut out peices of paper and put tape on them with an english word on them. Their partner closes their eyes while the other one goes around the room and tapes the peice of paper to something.. Then when everyone is through putting the peices of paper somewhere. their partner that taped the paper will say the thing in spanish and they will have to go too it. It might sound confusing and if it is.. just answer one of my questions telling me how it is confusing and i'll try and help.

try this site for extra practice for your students: www.roadtogrammar.com also, use games, real-life examples, competitions...