These fun and engaging Grammar Centers for Upper Elementary are perfect for getting your students engaged in learning and reviewing various grammar skills. Bundle up with these winter-themed grammar centers that bring coziness to learning. Your kids will be eager to gather around for a cozy treat of hands-on learning.
I love the winter season for its coziness, hot chocolate, and fireplace gatherings. Winter is the perfect time to infuse your grammar lessons with seasonal flair and fun.
As the holiday spirit fills the air, using grammar centers with your upper elementary students can make learning more enjoyable. These January-themed activities create an interactive learning environment that your kiddos will love.
We’ll dive into each activity in the grammar centers to better understand the skills covered in the activity. I will also share short tips on how to teach these concepts.
Do you want to build a sentence?
I imagine Elsa in Frozen. “Do you want to build a snowman?” This fun grammar center challenges your students to build compound sentences.
To review and reinforce compound sentences, provide students with the sentence strip. They will combine the strips using coordinating conjunctions to build compound sentences.
The secret to building compound sentences is that the sentences must be similar. You can’t have two sentences like, “I walk my dog after school.” and “The light show at Disney was amazing.” I’m sure, in some way, you could make those two sentences work, but it would leave one scratching their head.
If your students struggle with building compound sentences, have them lay out all the strips to piece together sentences that relate to each other.
Popper's Possessive Penguins
Popper’s penguins are being pesky and need a little fine-tuning! It’s time to teach them the subtle art of giving, and your students can help them do that…learn to give!
This activity guides students in identifying if the phrase is singular possessive, plural possessive, or irregular possessive. There are a variety of possessive phrases to help your students.
To make this activity more challenging, have your students rewrite the phrases using the possessive forms. Rewriting the phrases will help students develop a better understanding of apostrophe placement.
One of the biggest hang-ups I have noticed with kiddos is knowing where to place the apostrophe. A little trick I teach is that if an “s” is at the end of the word, give the word an apostrophe (s’). If the word doesn’t have an “s,” then it needs an apostrophe and an “s” (‘s)
Get your kiddos to write complete sentences using the phrases to kick this grammar center up a notch. This not only helps with possessive nouns but also helps with sentence structure.
Polly’s Pronouns are Pretty Cool!
Who doesn’t love a fun gameboard? These gameboards dive into identifying and differentiating between subject and object pronouns.
Don’t worry if your kiddos scratch their head and ask what subject and object pronouns are because I have a tip. Subject pronouns come before the verb, and object pronouns come after the verb. It’s that simple!
Let’s take a look. She is a subject pronoun, and her is an object pronoun. You wouldn’t say, “Her likes to dance.” It doesn’t make sense. You would say, “She likes to dance.”
It’s also essential for students to know what pronouns are subject and which ones are object pronouns. I’ve included a skill review sheet to help your kiddos if needed.
Van Der Frost’s Progressive Verb Tense
Progressive verb tense can be very tricky. This game reviews three progressive verb tenses: past, present, and future progressive.
This game gets your students learning and having fun as they work to get the most points. Various questions ask students to identify, label, and determine the progressive verb tense.
If your students struggle with progressive verb tense, have them do a comparative analysis. Offer sentences in both simple present and present progressive tense form. Guide students in comparing the differences in meaning and usage.
Let’s look at simple present tense versus progressive verb tense.
Simple Present Tense is used for facts, habits, things that won’t change, and describing yourself.
The present progressive tense is used for things happening now, temporary actions, things that will change, and describing a current action.
Discussing the why and the difference between simple and progressive tense helps students better understand when to use one form versus another.
Negative Nelly and Double Negative Words
Don’t not take my word for it….double negatives can be confusing! See what I did there? Lol! Double negatives are those pesky words that show up in students’ writing far too often.
Negative Nelly needs help with editing. Her editing skills could be better because she always uses double negatives in her writing. She needs a new approach to writing clear sentences; your students can help!
What exactly is a double negative? It’s when a sentence contains two or more negative terms. They occur when you combine a negative form of a verb with another negative word.
A few examples of negative words are don’t, cannot, have not, nothing, nobody, never, hardly, none,
Students are to read sentences and determine which word completes the sentence without using double negatives. There are 24 winter-themed task cards to help your students dive into the world of double negatives.
Chillin with Commas in a Series
This has to be one of my favorite activities in this resource. I love it because it gets students diving into a detective’s role of digging deep.
Commas in a series are fun skills students usually do well with. Check out this post if you’re looking for a free week-long resource that dives into teaching commas in a series. This post dives deeper into teaching grammar in a way that helps your students master skills. Remember to grab the freebie with anchor charts, guided notes, and more!
This fun activity requires students to identify if commas are correctly used in a sentence. They will also add commas in the correct place and write sentences using a series of words given.
The activity builds in difficulty as students work through the different question cards.
Commonly Confused Words
The grammar centers for upper elementary is not complete without commonly confused words.
Commonly confused words are confusing for a reason! There is so much to learn to have word clarity. Sheesh!
- You have words that have the same sound but different spelling. (Homophones)
- Some words have the same sound and same spelling. (Homonyms)
- Finally, you have words with the same spelling BUT different sounds. (Homographs)
All of that craziness is enough to confuse anyone.
This tic-tac-toe activity dives into various commonly confused words in hopes of bringing some clarity.
The resource includes a skill sheet that reviews the different words used in the activity. Students play tic-tac-toe as they identify the correct word to complete the sentence.
Final Thoughts: 7 Grammar Centers in Upper elementary
These fun grammar centers for upper elementary build a foundation that supports students’ understanding of language. In a nutshell, these winter activities reinforce students’ grammar skills.
While some of these skills may not be traditional standards, they play a crucial role in building a solid foundation in grammar.
Whether your students find these centers quick and easy or surprisingly challenging, all centers are designed to enhance their language skills.
Some of these skills cater to lower elementary levels, but they can also fill in knowledge gaps that your students may have.
