Easy Grammar Lessons for the Overhead
An overhead projector is a valuable resource for teaching writing. By observing the teacher and participating in grammar lessons, students can work on improving their own pieces of writing. Fun grammar activities are a key component to writing instruction. Students must know how to use different parts of speech, combine subjects and predicates and include correct mechanics in their writing to become better writers.
Capitals and Punctuation
No matter the grade, students have trouble remembering to put capital letters and punctuation marks in all of their sentences. For this quick and easy lesson, you will need a red overhead pen, a green overhead pen and a piece of writing on a transparency. Make sure the piece of writing you choose has many mistakes in capitalization and punctuation. With your students, use the green pen to circle the first letter of words found at the beginning of each sentence. The red pen will be used to make the punctuation marks at the end. The green signifies the starting point of the sentence while the red is for stop.
The rules for plural nouns are often confusing for children because there are so many different rules. To prepare for this lesson, you will need to make a transparency of words that are singular nouns. Make sure to put in words that add -s, -es and -ies. Cut the words apart, and place on the overhead. Students will have to sort the words into different categories based on what is added to the end when the word is plural.
Subjects and Predicates
For students to become better writers, they need to realize that each sentence contains a subject and a predicate. This engaging activity will help students remember to include both in their sentences. For this lesson, you will need to create a transparency with several different sentences with a space between the subject and predicate in each sentence. Cut the sentences apart, and also cut each sentence between the subject and predicate. Mix up the sentences on the overhead. Your students will match up the subjects and predicates to create a sentence that makes sense.
Parts of Speech
This quick and easy activity will help students practice the different parts of speech. Create a transparency of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. You will need to cut each of the words apart. Students will have to place all of the nouns together, all of the verbs together and so on until all of the words are placed in categories. You can even ask students to match up an adjective and a noun so the adjective describes the noun.