Grammar for Kindergarten

[AZNadine]

Hi everyone--

I teach Kindergarten, and my state has very strict requirements for English Language Development. The one that consistently boggles my mind is the Grammar component. By state law, I am to give my kindergarten students one hour a day of explicit grammar instruction. My instinct is to do this through oral language activities, but from what I read in the state regulations, that is not good enough. They seem to want specific lessons on parts of speech, grammar rules, and so on. 5 year old children in regular programs don't have this requirement, and I have been unable to locate grammar materials for children this young. The closest thing I have to use is called "Mountain Language" and it is excellent -- and I can use it to fill about 15 minutes. Aside from that, does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!!!

[Alex Case]

I would absolutely refuse to teach grammar to 5 year olds. It doesn't even matter how you teach it, a 5 year old will take years to pick up third person s whereas a teenager could pick it up just as well in days. You could just about justify explaining and questioning the students on structures that came up in songs, stories and classroom language, but even that is asking them to something they probably couldn't do if questioned about their own language.

I would quit my job, go on strike, write to the national press- anything but be forced to do anything that is so against every theory of learning and child development of preschool children

[AZNadine]

Thanks, Alex. Although I completely agree that it is inappropriate to be even attempting to teach Grammar to 5 year old children, our State Department of Education begs to differ. I just need to be able to "show" in my lesson plans that it is happening so that when we are audited, my school doesn't get sanctioned. That being said --- I still need ideas.

[Alex Case]

Things you could do without going completely opposite to 50 years of theory of education:

- Choose story books that have a repeated sentence and put the grammar points of it down as the grammar point of the day
- Ditto for songs
- Ditto for classroom language and other incidental language from good games for this age group
- Teach sentence stems that they can actually learn and use like "Can I have a...?" and call that a grammar point

Do not under any circumstances try teaching a/ an and plurals (as I have tried to), let alone anything more complex, as an isolated grammar point to this age group

[lovesfrogs]

Hello,

I'm going to be teaching the 4-hour block required by our state to kindergarten students in a self-contained eld classroom next year. I was curious if that is what you are doing as well because you mention the 1-hour grammar block. I wondered if you would share what your schedule looks like, and if you are able to incorporate centers into your day. I'm having a difficult time setting up my schedule because it goes against everything I believe...however, if I want a teaching job...that's what I must do! Thanks for any input you can offer.

[Alex Case]

Just noticed that OUP has a new book on how to teach grammar to kids. Don't know how young it goes, but got to help I guess:

http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Young-Lea ... 0194425894

And here's the last time somebody had such an idiotic idea (1872)

http://www.infibeam.com/Books/info/C-P- ... 33653.html

[petershell]

Hello everyone,
My colleagues and I have been successful in teaching grammar to kindergarten students.
The students know how to use singular and plurals and "a" or "an". They also can use the past tense in a few situations. The students are already aware of singular and plural and present and past tense in their mother tongue so these concepts are not new to them. "A" and "an" is new to them but it was very simple to teach this.
Repetition and presentation in a variety of formats is the key to success here.

Hope this helps!

[culture]

Hello AZNadine,
I would like to share some teaching experience and advices about teaching grammar in the Kindergarten with you.

First of all, I think that it is important to correct children’s grammar and to help them to find some rules that they are ready to understand. I always remember that children like challenges, they are fearless at this age, they like taking risks. Of course, the main aim of the teacher to provide students with an appropriate opportunity that won’t discourage them. Teachers’ task is to make them feel that they’re doing a great job, that they are able to do the grown-up or the elder children’s job. However, tasks and grammar activities should be adapted and should respond to the learning needs of your students. So, here are some advices that I hope you will find useful.

1. Teaching sentence structure. You probably do the activities with the order of the events that happened in a story or in a song. You show your students three or more flash cards that represent different scenes from the story. And you ask them to put them in the right order. You can do the same thing with the grammar structure of the sentence. Make flash card with the pictures of the repetitive sentence used in a story and ask them to put in the right order, brining their attention to the place that they give each word according the role it plays in the sentence and/or the question it answers. I found it useful when the sentences become longer, and students start using adjectives (colors, for example). So, you can refer them to the sentence structure and add a card of one color to illustrate the place of the adjective in a sentence.
Check this source for examples of grammar flash cards: http://flashcards.havefunteaching.com/2 ... cards.html

[culture]

Here are some more ideas about teaching grammar in the kindergarten:
2. Teaching parts of the speech. You can sing and learn a song with children. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc-ukN1R ... re=related
Make flashcards with the pictures with different parts of speech on them, prepare 1-3 baskets with an example on them, ask students to put the right flash card in a right basket.
3. You can teach students about punctuation. Capital letters are easy to teach. When you give them a picture with a word to color, ask them to color the capital letter with a different color than the whole word. They got it very fast! While you’re practicing their songs ask them to clap to represent an exclamation point that you can show them on the flash card. Or ask them to keep silence for 5 seconds when it’s time to put a comma, showing one more time the flashcard with the punctuation symbol.

[xiphiasatsi]

Teaching grammer to Kindergarten is a completely no no.They are too young to understand.How can someone teach grammer like nouns,verbs,adjectives etc when the kid is still learning "A for Apple","B for Bat" etc??