World's longest sentence
Topic: Conjunctions; compound and complex sentences
Students form a circle. One student (or the teacher) chooses a word to being the sentence and each following student must choose an appropriate word to continue the sentence. The game ends when a full stop is reached and as such students must use strategies such as descriptive phrases (adjective, adverbs, prepositions), conjuctions (and, because, but ) and subordination ("which was..." ) to create new strings of clauses. The challenge is to make the longest sentence possible.
For example:
Research suggests that grammar education should be contextualised, originating from the texts being studied in the classroom at the time (Herbert, 2012). This gives purpose to the learning and allows students to make connections between grammar and meaning (Myhill, Lines & Watson, 2012).
Grammar skills are also best taught in conjunction with writing, as this provides both opportunities for instruction and a testing ground for application (Marion, 2014). As such, the REDM teaching sequence can be useful to combine texts, instruction and writing opportunities:
1. Reading and investigation
2. Explicit teaching
3. Discussion and experimentation
4. Making controlled writing choices
(Reedy & Bearne, 2013, as cited in Horton & Bingle, 2014)
On this page you will find examples of teaching points and activities, which can be adapted to fit within a range of literature and genre study lessons, to start teaching grammar to your students in an engaging and authentic way.
Activities and Ideas
Warm-ups and games
"Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda"
Topic: Modal verbs; tenses
Individually or in small groups, students are shown pictures of people or characters and to come up with scenarios for how events could have turned out differently. In order to make sure students are hearing the "would have" construction rather than "would of", the following model/guide can used:
They should have... bought a better skateboard.
Then they could have... avoided hurting themself when it broke.
They certainly would have... finished the trick
And they might have even... become a skateboard legend.
Cartoon scenarios such the the following well-known Minties drawings, can provide a fun and entertaining prompts.
'Building up sentences' Challenge
Topic: Word classes; word order; clauses and simple sentences
(Adapted from Herbert, 2012)
In order to practice making phrases and clauses more interesting, students begin with a noun and build up, word by word, a descriptive noun phrase, then full sentence. To assist with the process and promote the use of grammatical metalanguage, students can be given instructions for each level, such as:
1. Start with a noun (a thing).
2. Add a determiner (which one).
3. Add a quantifier (how many).
4. Add an adjective (a describer).
5. Intensify the adjective (describe the describer).
6. Add a prepositional phrase (when or where).
7. Complete the sentence (what happened).
For example, students may end up with something like this:
Mad Libs
Topic: Word classes
Students can learn to identify parts of speech not only by finding them within writing, but also by coming up with their own examples. Using mad libs, students can learn to associate word class labels with words that 'feel right' and fill gaps in the text, as well as utilising syntactic (word order) clues to help understand the order of specific words in a sentence.
Mad libs outlines can be easily created or found online, for example:
“Today I went to the zoo. I saw a ______ (noun) jumping ______ (adverb) in a tree. He ______ (verb) ______ (adverb) through the leaves. I got some ______ (adjective) peanuts and ______ (adverb) passed them through the cage to the ______ (adjective) ______ (noun). This made me hungry, so I ______ (adverb) ran and bought a ______ (adjective) ice-cream. Afterwards I had to ______ (verb) ______ (adverb) to catch my bus home. I had a ______ (adjective) day at the zoo.”
Stand alone activities
The Jabberwocky
Topic: Word classes (morphological and syntactic clues); word play
(Adapted from Dixon, 2012)
The well-known poem The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll (re-printed below) demonstrates the impact that morphology and syntax have on our understanding of texts. Despite using completely nonsensical words, it is possible to understand the poem and the types of things being described through the order of the words in the sentence and their endings. For example:
Reporting the news
Topic: Passive voice; subject and object; tenses
(Adapted from Horton & Bingle, 2014)
The passive voice is often used in newspaper articles and similar texts, when either the subject of a sentence is unknown or the direct object of the action is being emphasised. It can also add an impersonal or factual feeling to texts.
Students should begin by reading texts with examples of passive construction, such as the newspaper article to the right. Questions can be used to draw attention to this clause construction, such as:
-
Who recovered the iPad?
-
Who stole the iPad?
-
Who returned the iPad to the Jobs family?
The answers to these questions, although implied, are not explicitly stated, leading to discussion regarding the function and effect of this writing choice.
Explicit teaching can then be implemented to ensure students know how to correctly form the passive, for example through re-writing or re-stating active sentences in the passive form:
Literature-based activities
Students should then be given opportunities to practice using the passive voice through creating their own verbal or written news reports. Topics for such reports could include the events of a class field trip, local/national news, or even events from a class text/novel.
For example, using the popular novel Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling:
Active: "The police returned both devices" Passive: "Both devices were returned (by the police)"
Facts and events ("Reporter's Notes")
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Hogwarts holds the Triwizard Tournament
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Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory compete
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They grew a magical maze for the final task
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The Triward cup was a portkey
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Voldemort kills Cedric Diggory
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The Ministry of Magic finds Barty Crouch Jr. guilty of setting the trap
Passive voice (example text)
The final round of the Triward Tournament was held by Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry last night. A magical maze was grown for the final task, in which the school's two champions - Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory - were set to compete.
The event ended in tradgedy, however, when the Triward Cup was found to be a portkey and Cedric Diggory was killed before he could finish the challenge. Mr. Barty Crouch Jr. was found guilty of setting the cruel trap and will face his sentence this morning for the crime.
I - like - to - go - to - the - park - on - the - weekend - but -
it - doesn't - always - happen - because - the - weather - which - often - changes - can - make - the - ground - too - wet - and - I - don't - like - to - wear - gumboots - to - keep - my - feet - dry - because - etc.
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
Topic: Sentence structure (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory)
Don't let the pigeon drive the bus! by Mo Willems is one example of a text which can be used to identify, compare and contrast different sentence or clause formations. The book presents different kinds of linguistic interactions between the main character and the reader, providing examples of the following:
Statements (declarative) - "I've got an idea."
Questions (interrogative) - "Hey, can I drive the bus?"
Commands (imperative) - "Let me drive the bus!!!"
Exclamations (exclamatory) - "Pigeon at the wheel!"
After reading or listening to the text, students could either a) use go through a hard-copy version of the book and use post-it notes to label the different kinds of sentences, or b) use print out flash cards of the book's text to sort the sentences into categories, making observation on the kinds of words or punctuation in found in each group.
Attention should be paid to the function of each type of sentence, e.g. what kind of reaction does the sentence provoke? Explicit teaching can then deal with the construction and use of each sentence type, such as subject inversion in interrogative forms and avoiding the use of exclamatory forms in academic writing.
To consolidate an understanding of how these sentence types work in oral language, students can act out the role of the pigeon, using body language and intonation to match the function of each sentence. Students can also experiment with sentence forms by writing their own pigeon-style monologues, using all four sentence types to convince their reader/audience that they should be allowed to do something unexpected (fly a plane, move to Peru, etc.).
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Rules of syntax tell us that "the" must be followed by a noun or noun phrase, while words ending in "-y" are often adjectives which also occur before nouns.
Students can use these kinds of linguistic knowledge, both consciously and sub-consciously, to assist with reading and vocabulary, as well as to play with language in the same way as Carroll and Dr. Seuss often do. They can be set the challenge of 'decoding the Jabberwocky' by labelling the nonsense words with their parts of speech and replacing them with 'real' words, such as:
Twas (it was) sunny and the sneaky boys / Did play and wrestle in the forest
As well as understanding unknown words, students can also have a go at creating their own by encouraging them to use made-up words and create their own non-sensical poems for performance or publishing.
