Grammar Court

You can only do DOL for so long before you and the kids go stark raving mad. One way to combat the boredom is to set up a Grammar Court.

Students are encouraged (possibly with some tangible incentives?) to bring in print errors that they find. One student acts as judge, others serve as prosecuting and defense attorneys. The rest of the class is the jury; they listen to the arguments for and against the usage, word choice, or spelling, and then vote "guilty" or "not guilty."

This is fun, but requires some work to get the ball rolling. A good way to introduce it is with a Readers' Theater script, which models the procedure. After that, the students are assigned to bring in the errors on a weekly basis. Teacher should stockpile a good assortment of these to fill up the docket, including some nonerrors to keep the class on its collective toes! A day or two before the trial date, different defense attorneys can be given the offending examples and asked to come up with a good defense for them. Prosecutors should also be given specific cases to prepare for.

Create a "jail" on a wall in your room. Divide it into two sections. As offending words are found guilty, the judge needs to sentence the words appropriately.

Send the words that can be "rehabilitated" (used correctly in other sentences) to one section of the jail. For example, the word "it's" is incorrect in the sentence "The cat ate it's food" but could be used correctly in the sentence "It's a beautiful day." Post the conditions for release next to the word (the rules that tell when it can be used correctly).

Send the words that are totally incorrect to the area of jail labeled "Menace to Good Grammar." These would include words like "alot" and "alright," which are never correct.

If you choose to do this, beware of offending your school secretary or other teachers! A surprising number of adults misuse affect/effect or its/it's. It would be a good idea to make student work off limits so that there's harmony in the classroom, too.