Teaching Grammar and a Giveaway!

I absolutely love to teach grammar, so, this week, I thought I'd share some of the ways in which I integrate grammar into my writer's workshop and station rotations. Here's what I plan on discussing this week:

On Thursday, I'll have a link-up, where you can link up a blog post about how you teach grammar. That way, you'll be able to share your best practices, too! At the end of this post, I have an awesome grammar game to review and give away to a lucky follower!

I do not teach grammar in isolation. I teach it during my writer's workshop. I am very familiar with all the skills my students need to learn and I make sure to cover a few of them a week. Each time I model write I always stress, among other things, the importance of using specific nouns, action verbs, and descriptive words. I've been doing this since the first days of school. Here is an example of a simple story I wrote with my first graders about what my snowman does at night.

First, I read Snowmen At Night, by Caralyn Buehner. Then, the children and I wrote this story together. Next, they wrote their own stories. Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the finished products, but, they came out really cute. After model writing one more story based on a Caralyn Buehner book, the children were asked to write one on their own, without me model writing first. Their story was based on the book Snowmen at Work. Here is a finished first grade story:

She tried her best to use strong verbs and descriptive words. I think she did a great job! On Wednesday, I'll show you the rubric I used to grade these, when I discuss how I assess my students in grammar. These writing activities come from my pack, Snow Much Fun With Caralyn Buehner Books! There is also a fun Parts of Speech Game in this pack!

This is just one way in which I integrate grammar into my curriculum, without teaching it in isolation. Tomorrow, I'll show you some of the fun station games my students play each week to review and practice grammar skills.

Now, onto the giveaway! Learning Resources sent me this fabulous game called Sentence Buildings, which is a parts of speech activity set. Talk about fun!

It includes 9 buildings (noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, article, conjunction, adverb, preposition, and punctuation) and 300 double-sided words cards. Students learn to craft sentences with the color-coded word cards. They can build simple sentences by selecting one of each of the parts of speech they have learned. Then, as they learn more parts of speech, they can add words to see how their sentences change. My students played this game several times and it is definitely a favorite of theirs. They love the buildings and how colorful the pieces are. I love how they are so excited to make and read their sentences to their friends.

These are not my students playing the game, but look at how much fun it looks! There is so much differentiation with this game and so many ways to play it. It's definitely a must have in any primary classroom. Learning Resources is allowing me to give one of these gems away to one of my lucky followers. Could be you! Just use the rafflecopter below to enter. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you'll come back tomorrow to read about some of the exciting grammar games my students play each week! See you soon!