Grammar Games and Activities for Teachers

Dictation Game

• Divide the class into two teams and have a member from each team come to the board. Read a sentence twice to the students. The student who correctly writes the sentence first, with proper spelling and punctuation, wins a point for his team. A new student from each team will come to the board for the next round. The game continues until every student gets at least one chance to participate.

Scrambled Word Cards

• Write various words on note cards representing different parts of speech then mix the cards up in order and place them on a white board ledge. A student from one of the two teams will come up to the board and arrange the cards to compose a sentence. The student does not have to use all the cards but gets a point for each word used in the sentence. A student from the other team next comes up and makes a different sentence with as many of the word cards as possible. Periodically, you can add and take away some of the word cards to keep the game going.

Sentence Editing

• Write a sentence on the board that contains various mistakes. A member from each team comes up to the board. The first student who writes the corrected sentence wins a point for her team. Write another sentence with mistakes on the board for the next team members to correct. The first team to score 10 points wins.

Find Parts of Speech

• Break up the class into teams of three to four students. The teams can gather around one desk to compete. Give each team a handout with a paragraph from a book then call out a part of speech, such as "noun." The teams must count the number of nouns in the paragraph. After a minute, call time and ask each team how many nouns they found. The team that comes closest to the correct number wins a point. Repeat the game with the same paragraph but ask for another part of speech.

Brainstorm

• With the students separated in teams of three or four, call out a word, such as "desert." Each team will choose one student to be the writer and the rest help come up with as many sentences as possible using the chosen word. After one minute, call time and ask each team to read their sentences. Award points for each correct sentence. The team with the most correct sentences wins that round. The game can be repeated using other words.