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Gauge Your Students' Grammar

As you prepare to teach grammar this year, focus on fundamental questions: What do my students know? What do I want them to know? How can I help them learn?

At the start of the school year, you may have a decent understanding of the last two questions. But what your students already know about grammar—that can feel like a mystery.

Rather than making assumptions, why not give a grammar pretest?

Grammar pretests will clue you into students' existing skills and knowledge. The results will help you map out concepts to target and will show which students need extra support.

Where can I get grammar pretests?

Use or adapt these grammar pretests, which feature standards-aligned questions for grades 2–10. Refer to the answer sheets to check the work and identify a teaching focus for each question.

What should I do with the results?

  • Look for patterns in students’ answers. Devote extra time to teaching difficult concepts.
  • Use the tests to measure progress. Save the pretest results. Near the end of the year, have students repeat the test or complete a related post-test. Compare the results.

What resources can help me teach grammar?

Consider these trusted resources from Thoughtful Learning. 

Grammar Minilessons

Each quick lesson presents a basic concept and activity.

Inside Grammar 

These online units provide videos, instruction, examples, and downloadable activities to teach standards-based language skills for grades 2–10.

SkillsBooks

These activity books give students practice with punctuation, capitalization, spelling, usage, and grammar. Cross-references connect with writing handbooks, inviting students to learn grammar skills and apply them immediately in their revising and editing.

Grammar Adventures (Coming Soon!)

This engaging online resource will allow students in upper elementary to choose their own path through video adventures, discovering the wonders of their world and learning about wonderful words! Each video will feature an exciting location and will teach about parts of speech and sentences. After each video, students will choose an option for another adventure. Later, they will complete activities and quizzes to measure their learning.

Thoughtful Learning Blog

Blog posts give advice for teaching and assessing grammar.

Teacher Support:

Click to find out more about this resource.

Standards Correlations:

The State Standards provide a way to evaluate your students' performance.