Give students a list of sentences and set a timer. Have students use apostrophes to shorten the sentence. The first student to finish wins. An example sentence is: We will not go to the store. The sentence can be shortened by writing: we won't go to the store. Another example sentence is: he was not home. The shortened version is: he wasn't home.
To help children learn parts of speech, use a crossword puzzle format. Give kids points for each word found in the crossword puzzle, then add bonus points for naming the part of speech the word is.
Make a list of grammatical definitions and principles, scramble the letters, then let students unscramble the letters to make the right grammatical word or phrase. Give hints by describing the function of a word or by giving the definition of the scrambled word.
Prefixes and suffixes can change the meaning of a word. Come up with a list of words that can be modified with a prefix or suffix, then give a definition to the kids and see how many can choose the correct suffix or prefix to make the list word mean the same thing as your definition. Example: see. Ask students to add a prefix to the word "see" that means "seeing into the future." The prefix would be "fore," which would make the word "foresee," meaning to predict the future.
Write a short story without any commas. Break students into two teams and have a student from each team read the story. Allow the other students to stop them when a comma should be inserted. The first team to complete the insertion of commas into the story will win the game.