Exciting grammar
Is it really possible to make English grammar exciting, fun, enjoyable, and varied?
By and large, English grammar tends to get a bad press.
For a lot of everyday speech, and indeed a fair amount of contemporary literature, tends to play fast and loose with correct grammar which can make children wonder why they have to learn any grammar at all.
After all, most of us can speak and be understood…
However, as many people do come to realise, if we want to be listened to and have our written communications read and understood, we need to express ourselves both clearly and in an interesting way.
Thus, perhaps more than with any other subject in the curriculum, the image of grammar really needs to be changed. The only question is, how to do it?
This is the task the author of “Getting to Grips with English Grammar”, Charlotte Makhlouf, has put at the forefront of her course; a course which covers English grammar from year one to year six in the National Curriculum.
The solution she has found involves teaching grammar through a series of very lively themes and cross curricular activities. For example, lessons on nouns take us into the world of treasure chests, while the concept of prepositions is taught via the local police station having a sort out.
As for fronted adverbials, these are experienced via “Seals attacked,” while “Chocbots Chocolate Sort Out” turns out to be the mechanism for experiencing and understanding suffixes!
(Was that exclamation mark really necessary at the end of that last sentence? Perhaps your year six pupils can help me decide! Sorry, there’s another one.)
You can see examples of how this approach works via our website where you will find the covers of each of the six volumes displayed along with sample pages to download and try with your pupils. To find out more, click on the volume that you would like to explore.
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