Grammarama!: Innovative Exercises, Creative Activities, Models from Reading, Sentence Combining, Updated Rules, and More!

Lisa Arsenault is a high-school English teacher who is involved in
several ministry campaigns to increase literacy.

The focus of this book is on the acquisition of writing skills rather
than the accumulation and memorization of grammar rules. Students will
learn how to test for errors and correct for them, how to construct
complex sentences and vary usage, and how to apply grammatical concepts
to a variety of creative-writing situations.

Each aspect of grammar that is addressed is set up using a similar
format. On the student-ready page, following a short description of
topic, instructions are provided for the students to follow. Topics
include scrambled adjectives, word order combinations, unsplicing
commas, correcting for disjointed sentences, sentence-combining
challenges, manipulating sentence structure, and adverbial puns. The
teacher-information page follows with the background, learning
objectives, activity introduction, and answer key for each activity.
This format varies for the last chapter, which addresses the issues of
changing rules and suitable terms. It has helpful information on
“because” and “but” beginning a sentence, the ubiquitous use of
“like,” and the form that has bedevilled writers for generations:
splitting infinitives.

This is an exceptionally useful book. The photocopiable student-ready
sheets are easy to follow. The accompanying information for teachers is
practical, sometimes suggests props to augment the learning situation,
and provides a helpful answer key. Many of the activities are shared:
students work in small groups to pool their information, compare
results, and learn from each other. More than one solution is often
possible for a problem, reinforcing the idea that language is flexible
and style is an important component of good writing. The order of
activities in the book can be varied; they can be repeated or omitted
according to the needs of the individual classroom, and one or two
activities can be pulled from each chapter to create a mini-unit. Most
importantly, a lot of the activities are actually fun to do, and the
students will be learning effective grammar while completing
interesting, meaningful assignments.