Use this substitute teacher kit for grades 7-8 that helps teach grammar by having students use a newspaper.
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Activities
Grammar Hunt
Materials: newspapers, What's In the News? Activities
Give pairs of students a newspaper or a section of a newspaper.
| • | Tell students they will be using the newspaper for a grammar scavenger hunt. |
| • | Pass out the What's In the News? Activities and read the rules. |
| • | Review the grammatical elements in the chart and provide examples. You may wish to have students use their grammar textbooks as references. |
| • | Have pairs search for about 20 minutes. Be sure to assist students when necessary. |
| • | At the end of the hunt, have pairs total their points. If possible, provide a small reward for the winners. |
| • | Encourage students to share the examples of each grammatical element they found. |
| • | You may wish to provide additional rewards for teams that found especially difficult or unique examples. |
The Proofers
Materials: newspapers, highlighting pens
Tell students that the newspaper is carefully proofread before it is printed. Explain, however, that even the best proofreaders occasionally make mistakes.
| • | Give each student one or more articles, preferably ones that have grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors. |
| • | Instruct students to proofread their articles, asking questions such as: – Do all sentences have a subject and a verb? – Do all subjects and verbs agree? – Are possessives used correctly? – Is there an antecedent for every pronoun? – Are there any unnecessary or confusing shifts in tense? – Are all words spelled correctly? – Are all sentences punctuated properly? |
| • | Have students gather in groups to decide how to correct the mistakes. |
Diagramming
Materials: newspapers
If your students need practice diagramming sentences, direct their attention to the front page of a newspaper.
| • | Select the lead sentence in one of the stories. |
| • | Write the sentence on the board, and model diagramming as appropriate. |
| • | Have students gather in pairs and select their own sentences from the newspaper to diagram. |
| • | If necessary, use appropriate pages in a grammar textbook to review diagramming. |
| • | Walk around the class, guiding and prompting students as needed. |
Mixed-Up Articles
Materials: newspapers
Invite students to play Mixed-Up Articles, a variation of the popular fill-in-the-part-of-speech game.
| • | Ask each student to copy the first two paragraphs of a newspaper article on a sheet of lined paper. Be sure they are using pencils. |
| • | Have students erase a word from each sentence and draw a write-on line in its place. Then have them write the part of speech of the erased word below the write-on line. Encourage students to erase words that represent a variety of parts of speech. |
| • | Ask students to work in pairs. The first student should read the missing parts of speech and ask the other student to provide words. |
| • | Once the words are inserted, the first student should read it aloud. Students can then switch places. |
| • | Encourage students to share their funniest mixed-up articles with the class. |
