As you near the end of your school year, it’s more important than ever to change up how you review any of the skills you want your students to retain over the summer. If you’re using Shurley English, there are many ways to add a twist to almost any concept you want to reinforce.

Earlier in the year, we showed you how to make Grammar Necklaces with the parts of speech. Here's a variation of this activity that I like to call "Team Building Sentences." (Team Building/Building Sentences...see what I did there?!?) Here's what you need to get started:

Supplies Needed: yarn, construction paper, markers, stapler or tape

Assembly Instructions:

1. Fold a sheet of construction paper in half over the yarn.

2. Staple or tape the outside edges to keep the yarn in place.

3. Write words on the construction paper. The more choices you offer, the more fun your kids will have! Be sure to have samples from all eight parts of speech. Here are some examples to get you started:

a, an, the

bug, lizard, leaf, log, rock

creepy, slimy, brown, scary, hairy, fuzzy, wet

under, over, around, inside

scuttled, oozed, crept, slithered, zig-zagged

Now, you can utilize these word necklaces in a variety of ways. Here are a few ideas:

1. With students wearing the word necklaces, arrange them in front of your classroom or learning space in a scrambled order. Then, when you say “Go!” have them rearrange themselves so that the necklaces create a complete sentence. You may even want to spice up the competition by giving them a time limit. Students who aren’t wearing the necklace can be the audience first, and then have everyone switch roles after one turn.

2. To help build teamwork skills, have your students who are “wearing the words” to collaborate and assemble their own sentences by traveling around, linking arms with other suitable partners whose words will help them build a great sentence. Be sure to have punctuation signs available that are not on necklaces, but displayed where they can be selected and used to make the sentences complete.

CHALLENGE LEVEL:

After you have verified that a correct sentence has been created, it’s time to jazz it up a bit by having students experiment with the four sentence types taught in Shurley English: declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory. Students will get a great grammar workout by arranging and re-arranging the “human sentences” so that each kind of sentence is created, using the same words.

The possibilities are endless! Feel free to share your ideas with us by using the comment section below.