Category Archives: Teaching Grammar

Teaching Grammar, Technology

Phrases Jeopardy

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Some time ago, I gave detailed instructions for creating a Jeopardy game with MS Power Point.  I was excited about a new software program that purports to do the same thing, but is much less cumbersome; however, I haven’t been able to get it to work.  When I try to save the game, the program crashes.

Oh, well — back to the tried and true.  For those of you grammar teachers who want a handy review for phrases (adjectival and adverbial prepositional phrases, verbals, and appositives), feel free to steal download my Phrases Jeopardy Power Point.  I’ll tell you, this was great on the SMART Board!  Instead of Double Jeopardy, I created three lighting round questions.

Recommended Reading, Teaching Grammar, Teaching Writing

Classroom Purchases

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My daughter Maggie and I went shopping today, and I made some interesting purchases for my classroom:

Each book is a collection of 180 class activities that can be used as warm-ups, homework, or extra credit.  I plan to use most of them as warm-ups, but I think some of them will be good full-lesson assignments on their own.

Here is a sample from the Spelling & Grammar book:

Where in the Whirled?

In the next five minutes, brainstorm as many words as you can that contain the letters, w, h, and e.

What is the longest word you came up with?  How many words did you think of that contain w, h, and e, but don’t begin with any of those letters?

This series is published by the makers of SparkNotes.  They also have vocabulary, test prep, and math books.

Teaching Grammar

Apostrophe Project

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I started teaching apostrophes to my ninth graders today.  I think links to these blogs have made the rounds, but I wanted to mention Apostrophe Abuse and Apostrophe Catastrophes as good resources.  You can download my student instructions for an apostrophe project in both Rich Text and PDF format.