Are you hearing crickets online when you teach grammar lessons? Don’t stress, you’re not alone. Here you’ll find fun grammar activities for distance learning that build stronger writers too!
Plus you can grab some FREE digital grammar activities at the end of the post.
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Teaching Students to Have Fun with (and correctly apply) Grammar
My students just zone out when I start talking about parts of speech.
We’ve completed at least a hundred lessons on commas, but students still aren’t using them correctly when writing.
I just can’t find meaningful preposition games that my students enjoy.
If you’ve said anything similar to the comments above, I completely understand. As an 4th grade ELA and Social Studies teacher, I’ve heard plenty of complaining from students when I start grammar lessons.
But I’ve built a collection of fun grammar activities that not only work in the classroom but also for distance learning.
Since this post focuses mainly on digital grammar ideas, I have a separate post with general ways to make grammar fun. πππ
Now without further ado, let’s jump into some virtual strategies and resources to jazz up your grammar for distance learning!
Digital Grammar Ideas That Actually Work
Since grammar is such a broad topic to teach, let’s look at different ideas for specific categories.
For instance, we’ll mainly dive into these grammar concepts and skills:
- Editing grammar mistakes within writing
- Identifying all the parts of speech
- Applying the correct verb tense
- Using prepositions and prepositional phrases in writing
- Labeling the correct types of sentences
Even though there are so many more we could cover, you would be sitting here reading this post all day!
Besides, some of the ideas in the game section work for all grammar topics.
We’ll kick things off with prepositions.
Preposition Spinner Game
This is one of my favorite fun grammar activities for distance learning. Students receive a “wheel of prepositions” that they can spin to choose a preposition.
Then they must create a sentence that correctly uses that preposition.
Once students start spinning that wheel, they want to keep going on and on with this grammar game. This is great because I want them to get as much practice as possible anyway.
Paragraph Editing That Also Improves Writing
Let’s face it: the whole point of having fun grammar activities for distance learning is so that students can become better writers.
We also want lessons to be effective for learning!
So I use Weekly Paragraph Editing activities in my grammar teaching rotation.
In the physical classroom, students work in pairs to edit each paragraph, then they have to rewrite it correctly.
For virtual learning, everyone gets a Google Slides version that they get to edit together in Zoom Breakout rooms.
Not only do they have fun dragging the highlighter blocks to each grammar mistake, but they have fun working together.
If you aren’t confident breaking students into small groups for virtual learning, here’s a post that walks you through it step-by-step.
Play Grammar Songs and Videos Throughout Lessons
Another way to amp up the grammar fun during distance learning is to play songs related to grammar concepts.
Even for virtual learning, you probably have transitions and lesson warm-ups included.
So why not play catchy grammar songs to make things interesting?
My favorite resource for this is Grammaropolis on YouTube. This channel has songs related to:
- Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, and Adverbs
- Conjunctions
- Colons and Semicolons
- Apostrophes and other Punctuation
It’s even better if you can share your screen with students during these song breaks. They do a great job keeping grammar fun while also teaching grammar skills.
Incorporate Digital Daily Grammar Practice for Quick Wins
Some students may complain about grammar being boring, when the truth is that it’s too hard for them to understand.
One solution to this problem is to infuse Daily Grammar Practice digitally.
When students experience success with grammar, they’re more likely to be engaged with it.
These printable and digital Daily Grammar Practice strips offer:
- editable templates so that you can make it even more interesting for students. I like to use their names in my sentence examples. π€
- printable copies that can be used with interactive notebooks. This really helps in case your students don’t have the internet at home.
- the chance to offer build-in grammar practice for 10 minutes or less each day.
As their grammar skill and confidence grows, they will start to have more fun during other grammar lessons.
Easy Ideas for Teaching Parts of Speech
I gotta admit: parts of speech are my favorite grammar concept to teach!
A fun idea is to play Parts of Speech Bingo. Sites like Bingo Baker allow you to make free boards just by typing in the words you want.
Once you upload your bingo boards to your online learning platform, it’s easy to call out the different parts of speech for students to identify.
Another easy way to make this skill more fun is with an activity I call “Look in a Book.” My students like to call it “Parts of Speech Detective.”
Students can use any book in class or at home. While they are reading, they will fill out a chart that I give them with parts of speech that they find in the book.
It’s like practicing two skills in one: reading + grammar!
FREE Grammar Activities for Your Classroom
Just as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I have freebies for you. π
One is a nouns worksheet set that can also be used digitally through Google Classroom. You do not need to enter your email for it since it’s free in my Teachers Pay Teacher store.
Grab that goodie here π Nouns Practice Activity.
The next offer is the Preposition Spinners activity shown above in the video. To download this free resource, just enter your email address here:
I hope these ideas on fun grammar activities for distance learning + the freebies serve you well.
Happy Grammar Teaching π¦
