3 Grammar Activities You Can Use to Also Build Vocabulary
When looking for quality grammar resources, you ideally want something easy to prepare, aligns with evidence-based practices, and engages your students. It’s also a bonus when you can find grammar activities that build vocabulary skills.
Sometimes it is HARD to find these types of grammar activities because grammar instruction can be boring for our students. There I said it. Our grammar therapy can get stale if we don’t watch out and switch things up when we notice our students aren’t engaged! When you see the glossy-eyed look or off-task behavior, all the signs you need to know it’s time to find a new grammar lesson.
I am always trying to create or find grammar resources that will keep my students motivated to practice in a session but won’t scrimp on quality intervention. Today, I am sharing three grammar resources that can build vocabulary with you.
If you are looking for tips on grammar intervention, check out this blog post.
Easy to Adapt Sentence Graphic Organizer for Grammar Intervention
Many of our language-impaired students struggle with understanding the parts of speech. Your students may show weaknesses with noun-verb agreement, adding in adjectives, adverbs, or prepositional phrases.
With your students who need to build more complex sentences, this FREE sentence frame graphic organizer will help them color code the different parts of speech.
Plus, you can use this graphic organizer with ANY activity. One of my favorite ways to use this visual support is with wordless short videos. In particular, the Simon’s Cat YouTube videos are pretty handy to use with this graphic organizer.
You can read more about how to use those videos HERE.
Target Themed Vocabulary with the Graphic Organizer
If you enjoy planning by themes, you can use themed books, photos, videos, or picture scenes to work on themed vocabulary while teaching grammar concepts.
As a group, have your students describe what they see while you write it in the correct parts of the speech column. Then, your students can create sentences using the graphic organizer’s visual support.
While your students create their sentences, you can use the vocabulary from the photos. Check out these seasonal inferencing task cards if you need some themed photos with this graphic organizer.
Resources for Targeting Grammar and Vocabulary with the Sentence Graphic Organizer
There are LOTS of ways to use this sentence frame graphic organizer! Pair this with real photos (search on pixabay) or GIFS! Need help with adding GIF? Head to my YouTube video and watch at the ten-minute mark.
You can also use Simon Cats videos, picture scenes from books or comics, and the pictures from these seasonal-themed verbs and vocabulary sets. Click the link below to check out.
A Grammar Activity that Focuses on Building Vocabulary in Context
Many years ago, I had a student who struggled week after week with remembering the grammar rules. Slowly, both the student and I became frustrated with the therapy process. My student was beginning to lack confidence and motivation to practice. And I, as the clinician, was stumped on how to help my student learn the grammatical rules. The evidence-based practices of implicitly and explicitly teaching the grammar concepts weren’t working for my student.
That’s when I shifted gears to focus on the content of a sentence. Instead of hyper-focusing on grammar rules, we concentrate on what makes a complete sentence. We began making sentences with real photos that included the who, what, where, and when. To reduce the overwhelm of writing and generating sentences independently, I made scaffolded worksheets to help build confidence with this student.
Changing How You Present a Grammar Activity Can Be a Game Changer for Therapy Progress
As we continued working on building sentences with who, what, where, and when, I found that my student was engaged, participating more confidently and creating more complex sentences with less support.
And with this approach, you can also target grammar errors within the context of the sentence, so we practiced grammatical rules as we reviewed each sentence created.
You can work on building vocabulary that is related to the picture by adding adjectives, more complex verbs, and vocabulary words seen in the photo.
If you need build a sentence grammar worksheets that focus on content versus grammar rules, check out this resource in my store!
Get High Trials and Teach Depth of Knowledge With This Grammar Resource
A lot of research shows that explicitly teaching the grammar rules with a cueing hierarchy is effective for learning morphemes. But, it’s hard to keep your students engaged while drilling morphology.
So, that’s why I came up with the Grammar Tracer worksheets. They are No Prep, incorporate tracing to keep hands engaged (and your OT happy), and provide a lot of trials with one verb at the sentence level.
You can help your students build deeper semantic networks with the targeted regular and past tense verbs by using visual supports to explain the verb in kid-friendly definitions and providing synonyms and antonyms.
You can stick these worksheets in a page protector and get many great grammar drills in a session. Often, I try to break up the session to have a drill activity and then a more play-based or hands-on lesson. If you start with these grammar worksheets, you can transition to the naturalistic activity feeling good that you got that structured practice in the therapy session.
What Grammar Activities Do You Plan that Also Build Vocabulary?
Do you have a grammar resource or activity that helps keep your students engaged while engaging in meaningful practice? Let me know what games or materials you have used to target different grammar concepts. If you use any of these grammar resources in your therapy session, tag me on social media @thedabblingspeechie so I can celebrate your therapy wins!
It’s always an excellent grammar lesson when you keep your students engaged and build vocabulary simultaneously!
