Jeff Anderson's book Mechanically Inclined is an awesome source of strategies for meaningful grammar practice!
Are these skills tested in multiple choice format? A jeopardy-type game might be a novel way to practice or review... I would definitely place these skills in the context of the students' writing.....For example, each day you could invite your students to find a piece of writing on which to focus for awhile....It could be published or still in the process....Use different-colored highlighters to have students identify places in their writing where various conventions are used....If unable to find a place, could they accept the challenge to revise and find somewhere in their writing where they might include the convention.....? Allow for lots of sharing time, etc... My fifth grade kids love to write on transparencies....You could put the kids in groups to share ways they have noticed convention uses in their writing....The group could create sentences including several chosen conventions to write on the transparency and share from the overhead....They might also select work from their writing where chosen conventions are shown and write those on a transparency to share.... We also enjoy finding these conventions in the novels we are reading....Since the brain loves color, provide kids with brightly colored paper or index cards and invite them to go on scavenger hunts for chosen conventions....Students lift/copy sentences and place on various anchor charts labeled with conventions....Groups visit charts on a "Grammar Gallery Walk"..... Have you ever seen The Amazing Pop-Up Grammar Book, by Jennie Maizels and Kate Petty? We make pop-up books for different conventions following the model of the book... We also use pictures from magazines.....You name the convention(s), and the picture is the "prompt" for sentence construction including required convention(s). Share and display... Use the newspaper for novelty, as well....Students highlight transitions, clauses, whatever you want them to find. Share. Display. I hope this helps! Best wishes! "The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations crumble and die out;...But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead."--Clarence Day Melinda Hawkins 5th Grade LA/SS McCulloch Intermediate School Highland Park ISD (214) 780-2325 [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
