Is it just me, or do you feel like Grammar is one of those ELA skills that is not taught in depth anymore? I feel like when teaching an ELA block, I sometimes don’t have time to fit in “everything” and for some reason Grammar seems to be the first subject to go. Even though it is one of the most important subjects to teach, it seems like teachers (including myself) only have time to focus on particular reading strategies.
One of the main reasons I enjoy using these Morning Work pages is because Grammar is incorporated! Each week focuses on the same grammar skill for 5 days straight. This not only gives me the opportunity to teach that specific skill in the beginning of the week but provides continuous practice throughout the week. Plus, these pages hold me accountable to make sure that I am teaching the proper 3rd grade grammar standards.
Similar to how the Math skills are organized through spiral review, I like how the Grammar skills are organized to build off each other. I know that I am not the only third-grade teacher who feels like my students (coming back from 2nd grade) cannot remember how to form a complete sentence, specifically that it has to start with a capital letter and end with a punctuation mark. I love that these Morning Work pages begin with the basics of sentence structures: making sure each sentence ends with and punctuation mark (Week 2) and then moves into whether the sentence is a complete sentence or a fragment (Week 3).
When teaching Grammar, I personally like to connect subjects and nouns together. As I teach subjects, I always asks my class (Who or What is your sentence about). I drill to them, that when writing sentences, I have to know who or what your sentence is about. This makes it easier to transfer the idea of what a noun is. I teach them that if they can’t remember what the subject of a sentence is, they should look for the noun in the sentence.
Same thing can be be said for predicates and verbs. These two skills also go hand and hand. When teaching predicates, I always ask (what are they doing, what’s the action?). From there I teach that the verb is the “action”, and to look for the verb in the sentence to find the predicate.
That’s another reason why I’m a huge fan of using these Morning Work pages. They are organized with Subjects and Nouns being taught together (Week 5) and Predicates and Verbs taught together (Week 6). After all these weeks, of learning about the structure of a sentence, students are then able to express their writing of a complete sentence in Week 7. The great thing about drilling these basics during the beginning of the school year, is that it helps students improve their writing skills as the year continues, in hopes that they will remember the important parts of writing complete sentences.
Read More About Spiral Review
- Getting started with morning work in the elementary classroom
- Morning Work: Daily Math Review
Diane Johnson
Hi! I just got cut and am moving from 3rd grade to first. I have the third grade bundle and absolutely love it. Do you have a bundle for first?
Mrs. Santillana
Hi, I currently do not have a first grade bundle. That is the plan for this year.