Diagramming a sentence can help students analyze a sentence and determine its structure. The exercise can improve a student's writing skill and make grammar easier to understand. Most students also hate it. Make it more palatable by introducing some laughs and involving sense memory. Instead of diagramming on the chalkboard or paper, make a human sentence diagram. Some students will hold the words while others will the lines that make a diagram. For example, for the sentence: "The hungry dog jumped over the lazy fox," eight students hold cards with the words on it and stand in a line. Another student stands with her hands straight up in the air in between the person holding "dog" and the person holding "jumped." Another student takes the person holding the word "hungry" and the two of them move below the line and stand in front of "dog" with their arms held diagonally and touching the shoulder of the person holding dog. Try this with several sentences.
Have your students stand in a circle around your classroom. Together, come up with seven distinctly different dance moves. Let your students decide whether they want to stick with modern ones or include dance moves from the '20s, '70s, '80s or any other era. Then assign each dance move to a part of speech. For example, "the sprinkler" might get assigned to "verbs." Then slowly read a sentence and have the students dance the appropriate move for each word. Be ready to laugh and expect errors along the way at first. Eventually you'll be able to read sentences more quickly and have more complex sentences. See how quickly you can get the whole class dancing in unison as you read sentences.
Ask each student to bring in the lyrics to his favorite song. Tell them to underline every noun and then come up with at least three synonyms for each noun. Invite volunteers to perform their favorite song, replacing each noun with one of the synonyms they choose. Afterward, talk about how the synonym changed the meaning or the feel of the song. Discuss the ways word choice matters and how the different shades of meaning can affect communication.
After teaching the differences between independent and subordinate clauses, have the entire class stand in a circle. Choose an arbitrary way of dividing students into two different groups. You could divide them up male/female, red shirts/blue shirts or any other method so long as it is an obvious one. Name one group "independent" and the other "subordinate." Bring out a soccer ball, beach ball or volleyball. Hand the ball to one of the students. Read a sentence and have the person holding the ball determine what type of clause is being read. If it is an independent clause, she should throw the ball to someone on the independent team. If it is a subordinate clause, she should throw the ball to someone on the subordinate clause team. Continue playing until everyone has had a sentence to evaluate.