Grammar is an important feature in reading skills, but sometimes it seems mundane to teach. There are some simple ways you can integrate grammar skills into your teaching, reading centers, or small group time. Somethings do need to just be taught directly, but the practice doesn’t have to be boring! Here are some ways you can sneak these skills into your daily teaching.
Grammar through Picture Books
Teaching using picture books is one of my favorite things to do. Picture books are so engaging for kids and you can pull so much just from one story (I mean, that’s what curriculums do right? You read the story for a whole week and pull tons from it). If you need more picture book teaching ideas, check them out here.
My students always love the Clifford books, so after we read a Clifford book, we created commands for Clifford! Anything that will get buy-in. If you have any Clifford books, you can snag this freebie or read more HERE on how I used him to teach imperative sentences.
Another favorite picture books I like to use is Go Away Big Green Monster (affiliate link). It lends itself to the Halloween season AND the lovely grammar skill of adjectives. Click the picture below to read more about this activity.
Grammar through Phonics
Have you thought about how you can practice grammar skills while practicing reading skills? In my small groups, I always found there was so much more to reinforce than just the phonics skill we were working on. I developed some phonics readers that review other skills as well. Each book is focused on one phonics sound/spelling, but adds in an interactive grammar piece at the end. You can read more about that HERE or click the picture to see the phonics readers.
Grammar in Centers
Task Cards
Task cards are the best for reinforcing and practicing new (and old) grammar skills. These little cards can be thrown into a center to review those little grammar skills and can be put into your Daily 5/literacy rotations/stations/centers (whatever you may call them)! I created grammar task cards that can be used as printable task cards OR a digital self-checking version. These even come with a little quiz at the end if you’re looking for mastery or grades. Click here or click the pictures to check out my printable/digital task cards for grammar.
If you enjoy using task cards, check out my 10 ways to use task cards post!
Prove Its
Justifying answers in grammar? Yes, please. These center printables are perfect for getting your students to articulate WHY something is what it is. WHY is this a noun? WHY is this a verb? Get them to justify their answers and have a little fun coloring too! Click here or the picture to see the low-prep resource (a freebie can be found in the preview of the resource).
Thinking Maps
Does your school use Thinking Maps? These are specific graphic organizers to help students organize their thoughts. As you can see from the Monster adjectives idea earlier in this post, I use them for grammar skills too! Here’s a fun one using a bridge map for common and proper nouns (a more complicated map in my opinion for littles, but this is simple). Click the picture or click here to read the post about it.
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