Title – Sentence Maker

By – Joan M Diez Cliville

Subject – Language Arts

Grade Level – Grades 2-4

MATERIALS:

flash cards

METHOD:

1. Are your students’ sentences a mess? Tired of doing the same exercises over and over again? Here is a simple activity to revise spelling, verb tenses and vocabulary. Just decide on the structure you want to deal with, give your pupils a couple of examples… and they’ll work hard (and enjoy it, too!) The activity may be done with the whole class or in small groups, depending on needs and circumstances.

2. The students write a number of flashcards and make sentences with them. These contain the articles, the subject pronouns, the possessive adjectives and the nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives and adverbs you think fit. Let your pupils add pictures where possible! Notice the following:

The Present Simple Tense

SUBJECT + VERB + ………….

Ann can swim / Tom is a doctor / They are happy

Charles has got a dog / The girls have got some books

He likes chocolates / My brothers speak French / Mary drives carefully

3. You can do wonders with 200 cards or even less than that! Students get organized and write 10/15 cards each, to begin with. This could either be set as homework beforehand or done in class on the same day . Make sure all necessary categories are used. Teacher can always suggest/add new words.

Shuffle the cards and pile them on a desk in such a way that students cannot see the text or the pictures. Decide how long you want to devote to the game itself (15-30 minutes) In turns, students. take one or more cards from the pile and try making sentences using at least 3 words. If the sentence is correct, the student wins 5 points. Cards that have been used go to the bottom of the pile. Add new words now and again! The student with the most points wins the game.

4. For your students’ benefit, the cards containing verbs should include S or ES when dealing with The Present Simple. For the same reason, add ING when dealing with The Present Continuous and indicate whether the verb is regular or irregular when dealing with The Simple Past (or even give students the past form straight away!)

EXAMPLES:

You can use any words you like. The following are just a few suggestions:

ARTICLES: a, an, the.

POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.

SUBJECT PRONOUNS: I, you, he, she, it, we, they.

NOUNS: bananas, bed, beer, bicycle, birds, books, boyfriend, brother, bus, butter, cabbage, cake, cat, car, chair, children, chocolates, day, doctor, dog, door, ducks, English, film, flat, floor, food, French, friends, girlfriend, hands, home, homework, horse, house, jacket, jeans, John, Italian, lake, lesson, letter, lion, London, man, mansion, medicine, men, milk, mother, motorbike, Mr Smith, Mrs Jones, neighbors, news, newspaper, novel, opera, park, pizza, policeman, policewoman, problem, radio, record, school, sea, shirt, sister, sofa, song, soup, story, street, students, swimming-pool, tea, telegram, thief, thieves, time, tomato, TV, water, window, wine, woman, women, zoo.

VERBS: be (include am, are, is – was, were) build, buy, can, catch, close, die, do, draw, drink, drive, eat, feed, go, grow, hate, have got (include has got), hit, kill, learn, like, listen, love, make, read, ride, run, sell, send, shake, shut, sing, sit, sleep, speak, spread, steal, swim, take, teach, tell, understand, watch, wear, work, write.

ADJECTIVES: beautiful, bad, big, cheap, expensive, fat, good, green, nice, old, small, terrible, thin, ugly, young.

ADVERBS: a lot of, always, dangerously, fast, here, never, now, often, quickly, slowly, sometimes, there, this morning, today, well, yesterday.

PREPOSITIONS: along, at, behind, beside, between, from, in, on, of, over, under, through.

E-Mail

Joan

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