How to help your students when they can't they tell a noun from a verb | Mentoring in the Middle

How to help your students when they can't they tell a noun from a verb

 "I know what an adjective is...but I can't explain it in words."

 Upper elementary and middle school teachers quietly sigh.  And figure out a way to add another skill review into their already busy days.

What strategies work?

There are a few different ways that you can work with students who struggle to remember parts of speech.

  1. Some teachers use No Red Ink or IXL for students to independently practice.  I found my students got bored long before those lessons improved their understanding.  That's not a knock against those resources - they work really well for some students.  For whatever reason, I couldn't get my students to hang in there with them.
  2. So I created some mentor sentences and taught grammar through them.  They did help a lot, as we deconstructed polished sentences and imitated them to start our own stories.  You can take a look at them here.
  3. Then I started to realize that some of my students knew what the different parts of speech were, they just hadn't practiced them in a while.  Why not put them into small groups and let them reteach each other?  Once they have the four basic parts of speech down (or six, if you add pronouns and prepositions) let them work on these coloring sheets that review those skills.  


Halloween's coming!  Are you ready for it?  Read about my week-long Halloween lesson plans to get your students to write descriptively.   Do this next week (lesson plans are all done!) and have your students share their stories on Halloween day (when they won't be able to concentrate much anyway!)

No comments

Post a Comment