Hey Guys,
I recently incorporated improvisation into a grammar lesson with 8th grade. We were initially doing a somewhat dry activity in which the students had to identify comma usage in a New York Times article. The students were getting really bored with it, so I decided to change it up and work on comma rules physically.
Each student had to think of either a complete sentence, dependent clause, complete subject, or complete predicate. Then the students would come to the front of the room and "play" that part along with a peer's sentence/clause. They would have to figure out in what order to stand in, and whether or not they could stand together without a comma. If we needed a comma, a third student would come up to play that part (the most coveted role..haha); that is, turn his or her body into the shape of a comma and stand where the class deemed he/she should go to make the sentence correct. The activity provided a nice kinesthetic learning opportunity and allowed students to visualize where in a sentence a comma belongs. I plan on implementing a version of this activity with the parts of a paragraph next!
So sad to be missing the Monday meetings, but I love reading your blog posts!
Teresa
I recently incorporated improvisation into a grammar lesson with 8th grade. We were initially doing a somewhat dry activity in which the students had to identify comma usage in a New York Times article. The students were getting really bored with it, so I decided to change it up and work on comma rules physically.
Each student had to think of either a complete sentence, dependent clause, complete subject, or complete predicate. Then the students would come to the front of the room and "play" that part along with a peer's sentence/clause. They would have to figure out in what order to stand in, and whether or not they could stand together without a comma. If we needed a comma, a third student would come up to play that part (the most coveted role..haha); that is, turn his or her body into the shape of a comma and stand where the class deemed he/she should go to make the sentence correct. The activity provided a nice kinesthetic learning opportunity and allowed students to visualize where in a sentence a comma belongs. I plan on implementing a version of this activity with the parts of a paragraph next!
So sad to be missing the Monday meetings, but I love reading your blog posts!
Teresa
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