Grammar Survivor
A review of general grammatical knowledge and application
{grade} {Arkansas Frameworks} {materials} {procedures} {grading} {my experience} {reflection} {sources}
{table of contents} {lesson plans}
7th-12th Grade
W1.1= Activate, organize, and build upon background knowledge through a variety of cooperative and individual strategies.
W1.4= Analyze thinking through the writing of explanations, directions, outlines, and story maps.
W1.17= Revise writing for clarity, coherence, economy, syntax, and style.
W2.1= Use developmentally appropriate spelling, usage, and mechanics in writing.
W2.4= Expand content-specific and personal vocabularies in writing.
-The teacher will need to have several (at least 50) questions prepared to ask the students. The questions may be written on paper or flash cards. Flash cards would be best to help accomodate students with special needs. If possible, questions may be written to be displayed on some multimedia device. Students should be divided equally into no more than four groups. An overhead projector or marker board must be available for the students' responses to questions. Four slips of paper in a bowl must also be present.
-The lesson review is based upon the popular television game shows Survivor and Family Feud.
-Students will be grouped into four separate
teams. Each team must choose a name, and a leader. The four
names of the teams will be written on the four sheets of paper
which will then be placed in the bowl. Two names will be
drawn to compete against each other.
-The teacher explains that he/she will be
the wise person of the competition, and then explains the rules
of the game. Each question is worth two points. This
compensates for any two-part questions that may be asked. (One
point may be given for a correct example, but not for an
incorrect definition.) Sample Questions
- All written questions must have correct
spelling and punctuation.
-The wise person will ask each team
questions written on the cards. Only only person is allowed
to answer, but each person on the team must participate at least
once. Only the person asked is allowed to speak. If
any other team member speaks out, the team is automatically
disqualified from the question. The student gets only one shot to
answer the question. He/she has five seconds to respond.
If he/she cannot answer correctly, the opposing team gets the
opportunity to steal the question for one point. The
stealing team must collaborate together, but only the group
leader is allowed to respond to the wise person. Any other
person that speaks disqualifies the group from the question. The
group leader has only five seconds to respond.
-If a question cannot be answered by either
team, the two teams not participating are allowed to vote to
determine if the question was fair. If a majority feels
that the question could not be answered, then a new
question will be asked to the original participant without any
penalty.
-After each student has been asked a
question, the final task must be accomplished.
Each team is to select one person to compete in the final task.
The wise person must ask the students to build a sentence. Certain
elements must be required for the students to use (two adjectives,
compound subject, semicolon, etc.) Final Task Examples
-The competing students will write their
sentences on the marker board or overhead. The two teams not
participating will judge the sentences. They can award up
to three points to the teams, based on their judgments of how
well the sentences were written. Sentences must be correct in
every way (spelling and punctuation).
-The total points will be tallied and the winning team will compete against the winner of the other two teams to become the ultimate grammatical survivors.
-Since this is really just a game, there is no real way to grade the students. The only real possibilities are in participation and attitude. A teacher could grade on correct/incorrect answers, but that would not be beneficial to the students. Many may feel pressured to answer in such a quick time, and be incorrect. It is not fair to grade this activity on correctness. However, it is very important for the teacher to correct any wrong answers. After all, this is a review. It does no good if a student fails to answer correctly and is never straightened out.
-I presented this lesson to the 7th grade students of Springhill Junior High School in Springhill, LA on March 23, 2001. The questions that I chose to ask were based on things that I felt that they would know, as well as things that I had observed them learn during my observations there. The following links illustrate the experience that the students and I had with this lesson
-I enjoyed this lesson. One reason I liked it so much was because the students became very involved in it. It was great to see seventh graders getting excited about grammar; it was also a little weird. Because there were so many students absent, I had to modify the game a little, but not much. Four groups were reduced into two, and the voting teams became the actual teacher. She was the judge of questions and answers. Overall, the lesson went over extremely well.
-As I stated earlier, it would be very hard to grade this type of a lesson. The only way to do that fairly would be to grade on participation. During the actual game, I found that many of the students who make the better grades were bashful about speaking in front of everyone. When their turn came to answer a question, they froze. Therefore, many who would easily answer correctly on a written test did not do so well in the five seconds allocated to them to answer orally. The only way I see to remedy this is to provide more time for answering, but that would slow down the progress of the game.
-This exercise did teach several important points of grammar, along with some extra stuff. The questions depend on the teacher, but I believe that most would include the important things. My questions dealt with the eight parts of speech, idioms, hink pinks, subject-verb agreement, and vocabulary. All of the questions were taken from things that the students had learned in class. It was basically a refreshment exercise. However, I had several opportunities to teach by correcting wrong answers.
-There was a lot of terminology in this lesson, however, it had to be applied to speech or writing. Because I only had about thirty minutes to play the game, I could not allow a lot of writing to go on. That would have taken too long. Therefore, I had to do a lot of "use this in a sentence" type stuff. If I would have had the other twenty minutes, I could have allowed for more writing. It is an important step in the game. Application is a key to learning, not memorization. It is important to allow students to apply their knowledge as much as possible. Therefore, teachers should try to schedule their plans to allow more time for writing.
-The assignment was creative. Sponging off of popular television shows is good to spark interest in the activity. It was awesome to see the way the students competed. They were eager to answer questions. They kept trying to take extra turns at answering. It was great that they applauded each other's efforts. That is a good social builder.
-It is not hard for students with special needs to be included in the game. As already stated, the teacher should write the questions on large index cards with dark ink. Then, allow the students to view the card in order to answer the question. This also helps hearing impaired students. Students who may not be able to write may answer orally. Students with learning disabilities can be given extra time to answer without letting the entire class know what you are doing. It has to be done subtlety.
-This lesson idea was based on the CBS game show Survivor and Family Feud. All rules and questions are original. Only the format was adapted.