Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District
Parts of Speech Verbs: Building Blocks of Grammar
Pupils begin with a brain teaser, take notes, and formatively check understanding with a Chinese proverb. In addition to parts of speech, the resource also includes information about parts of a sentence. Teachers may extend instruction...
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Descriptive Writing Using the Book Rumpelstiltskin
Use the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin to teach your third grade class about descriptive writing. Following a teacher read-aloud of the story, the class brainstorms a list of adjectives describing the main character. Students use this list...
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Fragments Wanted (Not)
Learners rewrite newspaper employment ads using complete sentences.
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Understanding Adjectives
Young scholars identify adjectives in sentences. In this grammar lesson, students define what an adjective is and identify them in sentences written on the board. Young scholars complete a worksheet as an assessment.
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Subjects and Predicates
Sixth graders explore writing techniques by reviewing sample sentences. In this writing subject instructional activity, 6th graders examine a list of sentences in which they identify both the subject and predicate. Students complete a...
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Slice & Dice
Third graders participate in a variety of activities to practice grammar and sentence structure. Words are typed up and put in a hat for them to draw from. Once their word is selected, they write several sentences including that word. ...
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Shopping Bag Capital Letters
Students observe names of items on the "Teacher's list of shopping bag items;" taking note that some items are capitalized while others are not. In this capitalization lesson, students encounter book titles, brand names, cities, and...
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"Painting" More Expressive Language
Students listen to the book Papa, Please Get The Moon For Me, by Eric Carle. They create an illustration using a computer paint program. Learners type one sentence describing their picture into a text box in the paint program to explain...
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Prepositional Phrases
There are two types of prepositional phrases: adjectival and adverbial. Gather teaching strategies from this resource to give your learners lots of practice and meet Common Core standards! First, review prepositions by providing a...
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Surrealist Games
Students engage in a game of Exquisite Corpse. By looking at a painting by Ren?? Magritte and creating their own Surrealist "room," students further explore the Surrealist idea of placing common objects in unusual locations.
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I Am a Book
Third graders discuss books that have been banned and the things that they have in common. They explore the concept of freedom of speech and write poems based on their discussion.
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Persuasion and Parallel Structure
Discuss the definition of parallel structure with your high school class. In small groups, they read a section of "The Declaration of Independence" to identify examples of parallel structure. Each learner writes an essay explaining the...
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Vivid Adjectives
Students review adjectives and play a game where students compete to see who can write the most adjectives for a given noun. They write a story about one topic and try to use a variety of adjectives in sequence tto describe a noun.
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Word Structure 2 - Suffixes
Eighth graders identify suffixes in unfamiliar words. They identify vocabulary words as nouns or adjectives using context clues and suffixes. They review the definition of a prefix, along with examples of prefixes and explain the...
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Clean Air
High schoolers read sales promotion reports and create a sales promotion summary using information from the report. They develop a graphic organizer to outline their information for a presentation. There is an assessment checklist...
ESL Kid Stuff
Describing Things (Adjectives)
Describing things using adjectives is the focus of this instructional activity designed for language learners. Class members play games, draw pictures, and sing songs, adding adjectives to describe animals.
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Pronouns
Fifth graders study pronouns. In this grammar lesson, 5th graders discuss what a pronoun is and write what they did last night using pronouns.
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Word Pyramid-- Parts of a Sentence
In this language arts worksheet, young scholars build a word pyramid by following the detailed directions on the page Students use the indicated part of speech, number of letters and initial sound to construct the word. Example: A 4...
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Show! Don't Tell!
Students write a descriptive paragraph. For this writing lesson, students define elaboration and discuss the characteristics of an elaborate paragraph. Students write a paragraph that contains vivid adjectives, strong verbs and exact nouns.
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Playful Verbs
Second graders read sentences and determine whether the verb tense of the sentence is past, present, or future. They play a game in which they identify the correct tense and move along on the game board.
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Adjectives and Descriptive Phrases
Students examine the use of adjectives and descriptive phrases to improve their written pieces. In this adjectives and descriptive phrases lesson, students look at demonstrative adjectives, common adjectives, and proper adjectives. They...
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Roll Out the Run-ons
Learners participate in activities in order to investigate the concept of run-on sentences. They identify a complete sentence and the correct characteristics that it possesses.
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Connecting Characters and Themes in Julius Caesar
Fourth graders prepare for the literary analysis. They locate, interpret, evaluate and analyze the relationship between a character and the theme. After a lecture/demo, 4th graders write topic and detail sentences, then correctly put...
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Yes, No, Maybe So!
Students view various pictures and identify those that show action verbs. They write sentences to summarize the actions shown in the pictures.