Practice makes perfect when it comes to learning grammar with this ESL resource. Offering a great way to teach about relative clauses, this lesson engages students with a series of partner, small group, and whole class speaking and...

Here's a wonderful way to learn English grammar. Class members examine the plural count nouns in Thiele and Weiss's "What a Wonderful World," reading the lyrics as they listen to Louis Armstrong's version of this classic song.

FANBOYS will enjoy breaking grammar rules, but they will have to use coordinating conjunctions, gerunds, compound sentences, compound-complex sentences, and even predicates as they craft poems like Shel Silverstein.

How do you describe a jellyfish? Individuals write adjectives for Nomura's jellyfish, take notes, and check understanding with a formative assessment. Notes include the definition for adjectives, guiding questions to help writers...

Though beautiful, William Shakespeare's prose can be inhibiting for learners who are new to his works. A lesson based on The Tempest guides high schoolers through the paraphrasing process, including noting the subjects and verbs to...

Don't you wish you could use passive voice? Be careful what you wish for! "The Monkey's Paw" is the focus of a grammar and language usage lesson about active and passive voice. Readers identify examples of active and passive voice in...

Des'ree's song "You Gotta Be" is used to model for language learners the forms that can be used to express necessity (must, have to, have got to). After examining the grammar in the song, the attention switches to a discussion of the...

Paul Simon's "Father and Daughter" offers language learners and native English speakers an opportunity to study adverb, adjective, and noun clauses.

Groups examine a series of examples, identify the common elements, and work together to discover "the causative" grammar rule represented.

Built around a moving short film about second chances and tough choices, this lesson mixes grammar, prediction, and narrative writing. Pupils practice with adjectives and prefixes before moving on to the film. The resource directs...

English language learners act out verbs, discuss their importance in constructing grammatically correct sentences, and then learn about helping verbs. They use helping verbs in a sentence then discuss how they are different from action...

What's the difference between the present perfect and simple past? Have your class practice identifying and using both of these verb tenses through pair activities, whole-class discussion, and a worksheet.

A fabulous language arts instructional activity has readers focus on the vocabulary in the key words, expand and build new vocabulary, and practice three grammar concepts. They recognize key words as they relate to communicating at work....

Use this lesson to reinforce the effect of passive and active voice in writing. First, middle schoolers write several sentences, and then use the attached worksheet to identify whether the sentences are written in active or passive voice.

Similes and metaphors are the focus of a poetry lesson complete with two exercises. Scholars read poetry excerpts, underline comparative phrases, then identify whether it contains a simile or metaphor. They then write five...

The capitalization rules are strict and inflexible—until you experience the fluid beauty of an Emily Dickinson poem. Ninth graders test their existing knowledge of language arts conventions with the many bent grammar rules in "I Felt a...

As the unit on research writing draws to a close, class members continue to revise and edit their papers, this time focusing on grammar, spelling, and punctuation (colon and semicolon).

An interesting article on editors helps young writers understand the conventions of written English. They read a news article about an editor traveling America correcting spelling and punctuation errors on signs.  They discuss...

Students use a word web to study about the different grammar components. They use the diagram with nouns, pronouns, suffixes, prefixes, compound words, and other examples for an interesting way to study about English.

Have your class doing everything from reading literature, analyzing literary devices, identifying independent and dependent clauses, discussing, and writing creatively with the rich resource found here. After a mini instructional...

Here's a instructional activity that adds some zip to a study of parts of speech. Class members read two versions of the same article, one loaded with evocative nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, while the other is missing this...

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy's swing rendition of Robert and Richard Sherman's "I Wanna Be Like You" offers young grammarians an opportunity to examine verb tenses, noun clauses, gerunds, and prepositions.

Time to revise! Using a writing evaluation rubric, scholars participate in a peer editing process to provide feedback on each others' informative essays. Next, pupils begin revising their drafts based on the feedback they receive. 

Scholars take a close look at the life of Louie in Unbroken. They discuss events considered turning points in their life and use several graphic organizers and guides to help direct their thinking. After thinking about their responses,...