Who Knew Grammar Could Be So Fun??

This year's first grammar lesson generated lots of laughs... so I thought I would share it with you. Today, I opened the lesson asking the students to show me how they felt about grammar and I received many thumbs down... uh-oh, I told them, I had to teach to a tough crowd. They all said, "Good luck!!"

I handed out a half-sheet of paper and the students wrote one sentence. My example was "The cow jumped over the moon," which I knew to be from a nursery rhyme, but the ticos thought it was the funniest thing and what was a nursery rhyme?? Each student wrote their sentence as I told them it could be as silly or as serious as they wanted it to be. Here's some samples of what we ended up with:

My teacher is great.

I just saw a really weird thing.

The sheep jumped in a bikini.

Miss Siscoe is great.

I am happy today because my mom is happy.

Jonathan is a rat.

My name is Jonathan.


I wasn't really sure what the girl who wrote "Jonathan is a rat" was trying to imply about her classmate, but we went with it and he was good humored about it.

Then we divided our sentences between the subject and predicate (aka the noun and verb), and I instructed the students to cut their paper in half on the line they had drawn between the two parts.

Then the fun really began.

I read all the subjects one at a time. We decided they were not complete sentences.

I read all the predicates one at a time. We decided they also were not complete sentences.

Then I mix and matched the subjects and predicates together, and here's what we got:



Jonathan is Jonathan.

I am a rat.

Miss Siscoe jumped in a bikini.


Uh-oh... that last one had them rolling on the floor. I was a little worried about parents hearing that I was talking about wearing bikinis... with their 10 year olds.

And then the killer question came that just topped off the whole stand-up comedy routine:

"Miss Siscoe, do you really wear bikinis?"