How exciting!! I'm so glad this worked so well. I always get reports
like this from teachers who involve their kids in grammar work this
way--through teamwork, games (e.g., Mad Libs), and connecting parts of
speech to meaning.

May I suggest the usefulness of Magnetic Poetry Kits in this kind of
work? The words aren't color-coded, but there a lots of things you can
do with plain tiles. There are now kits for varying ages and kits
specific to different subjects, etc. I have bought half a dozen aluminum
cookie trays and pizza pans and the students work with these in groups.
I prepare the trays in advance with the appropriate lists of words.

How about getting students to sort by parts of speech using phrase-slot
tests? Put down the following tiles:

the __   = noun

  __  -ing  = verb

seems __   = adjective


Then have students try out word tiles to see which words "pass"  in each
slot. This gets students feeling like they can rely on themselves to
determine which part of speech a word is without "person, place or
thing", etc. Also, they will soon discover that some words function in
more than one category: 'clean' is V and A; 'fight' is N and V, etc.

Gretchen, I hope you'll continue to get  creative with your grammar
classes AND share what works with the list and publish it wherever you
can. Great work!

***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~  E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
***************************************************

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