Some Sentence Making Worksheets and Activities

The kids start studying present progressive tense in New Horizons 1, unit 9 but this should be a good review for second or third year. The worksheet is short so it shouldn't take to long. After the kids do it and check it it the answers can be used as model answers for a charades game or pictionary.

This one is a collection of what I hope are interesting pictures for the kids to make sentences out of. Third grade used it to review Units 1 and 2 at my school. We made it a competition like this:

• the teachers pass out the worksheet one to each kid.
• review the vocabulary. "baseball", "cat", "angry cat"
• the teachers give some examples of possible sentences that the kids can make--ranging from super simple, "This is a baseball." to more complex, "Hot dogs are eaten by many people."
• the kids are put into their lunch groups
• as a team they chose three things to make sentences about.
• the teachers tell them that simple sentences are okay but also encourage them to use their imagination to make at least three sentences about each thing they choose.
• after five minutes someone from each team ( the loser of a janken) has to read the sentences.
• the two teachers then consult over what score to award that team. Ten is the highest one is the lowest.

Each team chooses three items to write about,so if you do it the same way we did it at my school then you can have three rounds. The kids are competitive so on the second and third rounds they will probably be revising the simple sentences they wrote at the beginning of the exercise. This is a good thing. When you award the scores you can use any criteria you like; number of sentences, correctness, imagination, complexity of grammar. Of course don't give any group a very low score, and always look for something good to say about even the simplest attempts. Originally we had planned to do only one round, but it went so well we kept going. The kids came up with some interesting sentences: "I like hot dogs, but I don't like walking hot dogs."....When you see the worksheet you'll understand.

This activity is meant for the Grade 3 and utilizes the vocabulary in Units 1 and 2. Of course it can be done with vocabulary for any grade. It's just a matter of putting the pieces together. There are twelve sentences drawn from the review section, Unit 1 and Unit 2. The idea is to print them out bigger, cut them up into sections and paste them onto some stouter paper or laminate them--they are going to handled a lot.-- and use them as a kind of sentence puzzle.

Here's one way to do it:

• Put the sentence parts into envelopes, one for each lunch group.
• Each group gets an envelope, but they don't open them until you say,"Go!"
• Tell the kids that they have x amount of time to make sentences with the sentence parts.
• You might tell them that any grammatical sentence is worth one point but if they can reproduce the sentence from the textbook it's worth two points. If there is a mistake you deduct a point ( Or not. However you want to do it.)
• Say "Go."

Maybe you don't think it is so important that the kids remember the exact sentences that occurred in the textbook. If so, then you can give points for the number of words used in each sentence, or to the first team to create a grammatical sentence.

Similar exercises based on other grammar might be a useful and fun way to review.

Grade 3 Unit 1 Passive Voice Worksheet

Here's another worksheet for Grade 3 Unit 1. This unit is all about the passive voice and knowing the past participle of verbs. I'm pretty sure all of the verbs used in this worksheet are in the glossary in the back of the third grade New Horizon so they can use that, or their dictionaries if they come up against a word they don't know. It's actually quite simple since all they are expected to do is draw a line from the various sections of the mixed up sentences.

For those who may not know:
A shamoji is the scooper that is used to get rice out of a rice cooker.
Shuriken are small dagger or star shaped weapons that are thrown by samurai and ninja.
Kamaboko is a food made from pressed fish paste. Good eating.
Anpan man is an anime character for younger audiences. Little kids love him; at least for the purposes of this worksheet.
I Am A Cat is the name of a novel written by Natsume Soseki.

Grade 2 Unit 2 My Weekly Schedule

In this unit Emi goes overseas, but before she does she tells us about her trip and where she is going to go. So that gives us the going to + verb construction to play with. Here are two weekly schedules that can be used to get the kids to start using this grammar. Example questions and answers are given on the sheet. It's a matching game so the kids have to find other students who are doing the same things that they are on the same days. Here's one way to use the worksheet:

• Have the kids talk about the pictures that accompany the schedules. Get them to say what the various images are intended to indicate.

I'm going to play table tennis.

I'm going to play basketball.

I'm going to study/do homework.

I'm going to play baseball.

I'm going to play a video game./ with my friends.

I'm going to sleep.

I'm going to watch TV.

I'm going to cook.

I'm going to go to Jusco.

I'm going to play kendo.

• Next, they choose three from the lists and write them into the squares of the days they want to do them.
• Then, by using the example q/a at the top of the page they find someone or someones who are doing the same things on the same days.

I haven't made it so the kids are required to find a given number of people doing the same things since it's not so much a game as it is an activity. Also I haven't done it yet so I'm not sure how many people will be doing the same things on the same days when a group of forty children select three items from a five item list.

Anyway, the whole point is to get them to talk.

Grade 1 Activity Dictionary Race

As you already know first grade begins with a lot of alphabet work. And since using a dictionary requires a knowledge of the alphabet here's a worksheet for first grade. Dictionary Race, it's called and the name is self-explanatory. It can be done by having the kids work individually-in which case the activity will end sooner, and that's not always a good thing.-or you can have them work in teams.

• So, maybe you've put the kids into their lunch groups with dictionaries for each kid ready to go.
• Of course they can see the words they are to look up on the worksheet so that ought to make finding them a little easier, but they don't start searching until a teacher says, "Go!" (wave a checkered flag if you can find one)
• The kids search for the word together, which takes the pressure off of individual kids, and when they've found it they signal that they have(more about that later) and the team that has the word tells the other members of the class the page number and reads the definition for everyone to write down.
• The fastest team gets a point.

About the signalling. The funner it is the better, so maybe you can have a squeaky toy set at each lunch group and the first kid to find the word can hit it and make it squeak. Just like a buzzer on a quiz show. I hate having to buy things for lessons but it shouldn't be too expensive to pick up some squeaky toys at a pet store or wherever things like that are sold.

It goes without saying (and yet I feel compelled to mention it) that the kids and the teachers should be using the same dictionary. The students in Kasama, at least my schools, are using the New Horizons Dictionary 6th edition. Yours probably are too.