If you are an elementary school writing and grammar teacher, you may have found that your students are tired of doing similar writing assignments over and over again. If you are looking for activities to get your students more excited about writing and grammar, it is important to find activities that make writing and grammar more enjoyable for them.
Mad Libs
Mad Libs is a great way to help elementary school children remember the parts of speech in a fun way. There are many Mad Libs templates online, or you can create your own. Mad Libs works well for a learning activity just before a long break or when the children are at school on a holiday, such as Valentine's Day or Halloween. Often, they will be having so much fun that they will not realize they are learning.
Mad Libs can be adapted to the student's learning level. For example, in younger grades, you may only want to use a game that has them pick nouns and verbs. Once the children have filled in their Mad Libs, you can have them share their story with a friend or invite students to read their story to the whole class.
What Happens Next?
One of the simplest ways to do this activity is to give a sentence or two of the beginning of a story, and then have the students each write what they think happens next. If you are reading a book to your class, you may also want to stop at an exciting moment, and have the students write what they think happens next. This works best for a newer book. That way most of the students will not have read the book yet, allowing for more creativity.
Another option is to have the students pick either their favorite book or a book they have read lately and write either an alternate ending or a continuation of the story. Be sure to encourage your students to use full sentences. Like the Mad Libs activity, students can share their stories with a friend, or you can invite students to read their story in front of the class.
Writing Prompt Their Way
Many teachers have their students do daily or weekly writing prompts, such as "Tell us what you did over the weekend." Instead of creating the prompts yourself, allow a student to create the prompt. This works best in older elementary school, and each student should have a turn. Let the students know a few days in advance that their turn will be coming up soon. If you are concerned about the appropriateness of the prompts, have the students clear their prompt with you a day or two before their turn.
With younger grades, you can give the students writing prompt options. Either have one student pick from three or four options, or have the class vote on which option they want. As an alternate, you could give the class at least two writing prompt options, and let each student pick the prompt he or she likes best and write on it.
As an elementary school writing and grammar teacher, you have many options for making the lessons more interesting. The key is finding activities that are both educational and entertaining. These are just three ideas, but there are many other activities that will get more of your students excited about learning.
Credits: Shilo Dawn Goodson