First Grade Grammar Practice for the Year | Lesson Plans and Activities

Make your first grade grammar practice meaningful and fun with this yearlong pack of materials! All of the lesson plans, posters, and printables you need to teach grammar throughout the school year are included in this resource.

Grammar Alive will help you:

• Bring first grade grammar skills to life for your students with active, engaging materials
• Address often-overlooked (but important!!) skills that lay the foundation for students to become strong writers
• Follow best practices in grammar instruction
• Better understand grammar concepts so that you can clearly explain them to your students
• Save time in your literacy block with activities you can integrate into your existing reading and writing lessons
• Greatly reduce your planning time

Each week of grammar practice materials includes:

• Grammar lesson plans that follow the gradual release of responsibility (editable lessons also included)
• Example sentences that use the target skill in context
• Activities to reinforce the target skill
• Ideas for integrating grammar instruction into your existing reading and writing lessons
• An “I can” poster for the weekly skill

You also get:

• Video directions that walk you through the materials (to make getting started easy!)
• Rubrics to help you track students’ progress
• 3 tests for assessment and giving grades throughout the year (you can also break these up into shorter quizzes)

The following grammar skills and topics are covered:

• Speaking and writing in complete sentences
• Capitalizing the first word in a sentence
• Capitalizing the word “I”
• Capitalizing names
• Capitalizing proper nouns (the basics)
• Correctly capitalizing and punctuating the date
• Ending punctuation (periods, exclamation points, question marks)
• Writing statements, exclamations, and questions
• Using commas in a list sentence
• Prepositions
• Nouns (common and proper)
• Conjunctions
• Sentence combining
• Adjectives, including shades of meaning
• Verbs, including shades of meaning
• Expanding sentences
• Subject and predicate
• Possessive nouns
• Personal pronouns
• Possessive pronouns
• Indefinite pronouns
• Present, past, and future tense verbs
• Irregular past tense verbs
• Informal and formal uses of language
• Articles and demonstratives (determiners)
• Basic contractions

This first grade grammar practice resource is for you if you:

• Need ideas and fun materials to keep your students engaged all year long
• Don’t have a lot of extra time in your schedule and want quick activities that make a big impact
• Aren’t sure how to help your students actually remember and apply grammar skills and writing conventions
• Want to seriously cut down on the time you spend planning for grammar
• Value best practices in literacy instruction AND want to use developmentally appropriate strategies

This grammar practice resource is not for you if you:

• Are looking for tons of worksheets or sentence-fixing activities
• Can’t spend 10-15 minutes on grammar about 2-3 times per week

More details are included in the preview, and you can also download a FREE week of lesson plans HERE!

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FAQs

How long do the grammar practice activities take?

Most activities can be completed in 10-15 minutes, sometimes 20. The resource is extremely flexible and shows you where you can break up activities if you need to make something shorter.

Will I need to teach a grammar lesson every day?

Nope! If you want to, you can - but I know that your literacy block is already packed. Many of these activities can be easily incorporated into your existing reading and writing instruction.

Can these materials be used as centers, independent work, or D5 activities?

Yes! Each week has whole class lessons AND (optional) follow-up activities. Those follow-up activities work well as independent work, as long as you first model how to do them.

Can I start this first grade grammar program in the middle of the school year?

Definitely! Look over the list of topics (p. 4, here), and eliminate any skills you’ve already taught. Then, start with whatever week seems most relevant to your students.

Can I teach the skills out of order?

Absolutely! Keep in mind that the earlier weeks will include simpler skills, but it’s very easy to use the weeks out of order.

How long will these materials last?

These materials should last all year! 35 weeks’ worth of lessons and activities are included.

Can I purchase just part of this resource?

This pack can only be purchased in full. However, you’re welcome to download a full week of lesson plans HERE.

Will it be difficult or expensive to print these materials?

No! The main PDFs have only black and white materials. You can print them as-is. There is an optional, separate PDF with color materials for the posters and some of the games.

Will this work well with your reading workshop and/or writing workshop materials?

Yes! Although Grammar Alive can work alongside any reading or writing program, it complements my reading and writing bundles nicely. If you follow the provided sequence of skills and lessons (for both Grammar Alive and my writing bundle), you’ll notice that Grammar Alive covers many skills right before or as you’re working on them in writing. This helps set students up for success!

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask them in the Q&A section. Don’t forget to view the preview and grab your free week of plans HERE!