It's May and Time for Engaging Review Activities

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The month of MAY signals the end of a school year for many schools.

Make every lesson count,
All you have is a few weeks left.
Yes! It’s summer vacation.
 Here are five lessons that I used at the end of the year. I wanted to review the concepts the students had learned while keeping them engaged and interested. Maybe one or all of these would be useful for your students.

Pretty Darn Fast Poetry Analysis Technique

 A unique way to analyze poetry and prepare for the AP Literature Exam or advanced English courses in both high school and college. I devised this method to help students who have trouble remembering all the elements of poetry. I hope it helps your students as much as it helped mine. 

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 Sentence Patterns Practice for the End of the School Year

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This interactive digital resource for Google Drive will teach your students to rewrite sentences without changing their meaning. This is good practice for students to achieve sentence variety. At the same time, they will be reminded of things that are associated with the end of the school year.

Good writers vary their sentence patterns by sometimes placing phrases or clauses at the beginning of their sentences. The twenty End-of-Year-themed sentences in this exercise all begin with the subject and the verb.

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Sentence Correction Practice with Detailed Answers

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Challenge your students with this four-page, twenty-question practice exercise. This review will help students learn to write sentences correctly. Students will read a sentence and then decide which of the five choices following it best replaces the underlined passage. Teachers can use this exercise as a diagnostic tool or a pre-test to create a lesson plan, or as an assignment or test.

The sentences contain errors in parallelism; verb tense; use of "which" and "that"; subject-verb agreement; use of irregular verbs: lie, lay, sit, set; misplaced modifiers; comparative and superlative degrees of comparison; and more. . .

The answer sheet not only supplies the correct answer, but also has a detailed explanation to make the teacher's job easier, and allows the students to see exactly why their choices are right or wrong.

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Nursery Room Newspaper Creative Writing Activity 

How many times have your students wished they could do something different and fun in your room? Probably more often than you know.

Here's a chance for them to do something they will really enjoy while practicing several valuable skills such as critical reading, creative writing, editing, proof reading, and cooperative learning. Students will work in groups to create newspapers based on nursery rhymes. They will have so much fun being creative and clever, it will not seem like class work at all. 

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Gratitude Booklet Creative Writing Project (FREE) 

And last but not least, this free activity would work as a Mother’s Day or Father’s Day gift that students could prepare.

This is a creative writing unit that requires students to research one of their own family members or significant friends and write biographical sketches. They will enjoy learning more about their family history and will experience the joy of giving a truly unique and special gift. The recipient of the Gratitude Booklet will learn how loved and valued they are by those who contributed to the booklet.

The student will learn:
• to write interview questions.
• to interview family members.
• to write a biographical sketch.
• to write/edit anecdotes.
• to compile a booklet.

Giving the booklet as a gift to the person it features is a special bonus and gift they will never forget.

I hope your May (or June) is successful, and I hope you have a restful vacation.

Thanks for reading!