Grammar Camp

The last week of school is difficult. Exhausting at times. As we stress over grading final assignments or tests, hunting down missing work, and other bookkeeping, the students reach a point where they cannot concentrate on school. All they can think about are summer break, being outside, sleeping late, and hanging out with friends. This year, I heard some of my colleagues counting down, not the days, but the hours and minutes of these final days. Sigh.

In contrast, in my classes, the students were newly energized during our last week of school. They came into our classroom ready for something new each day. Is that because I am so fascinating that they hang on my every word? No. It is not. My students were engaged because of Grammar Camp.

Grammar Camp is a running competition between “camp cabins.” This year, our cabin mascots were the capybara, lemur, meerkat, sloth, tamarin, and wombat. Grammar Camp can run anywhere from two days to an entire week. My eighth-grade classes had four days of Grammar Camp. In my seventh-grade classes, Grammar Camp was a five-day event. Camp cabins participated in races, tests of accuracy, timed activities, and performances for panels of judges. The winning cabins from each of my five classes won prizes. They claimed the bragging rights of Grammar Camp Champs! Until next year.

Grammar Camp has been a mainstay in my English classes for 16 years. It evolved from a few games and a bit of silliness into a full-blown camp experience with cabin mascots, a brochure, and even a cheer: We love grammar! We love Grammar Camp! You can read all about Grammar Camp in Enter the Rubber Chickens, but below is an explanation of one of the competitions we used this year. I call it the Grammar Relay Race.

Grammar Relay Race

To prepare, I collected boxes, jars, and other packages that would normally go into my recycling bin at home, and I brought them to school. In all, I had 35 packages: cracker boxes, cereal boxes, plastic spice jars, packaging from pasta and bread crumbs, tea boxes, cotton swab containers, soap containers, paper clip boxes, plastic bottles from juice, vinegar, and sports drinks, etc. You get the idea.

These product containers were placed in a heap in the middle of the classroom. Cabins (actually groups of student desks) surrounded the heap. Each cabin was given a chart with a list of parts of speech to find, and places in which to write what they found and on which package they found it.

The race required the cabins to find specific parts of speech in the writing on the containers. So, a cabin may find a prepositional phrase on a cereal box. They might find an adjective on a tea box. Any container will provide a proper noun: Q-Tips, Triscuits, Twining’s, McCormick, etc. I asked for 10 different parts of speech on the chart.

I took a few minutes to answer clarifying questions about the parts of speech. Then, I said, “Go.” This is when things got interesting. I felt safest standing away from the products and the cabins. Did some boxes and bottles fly through the air? Yes, they did. Did students run at me, full speed, in order to turn in their charts first. Yes, they did. Then, I checked their answers aloud, and points were given to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place cabins, based on accuracy. The racing only helped in the case of a tie score.

The Grammar Relay Race is just one of many contests and competitions in Grammar Camp. There are also the Grammar Grab, Grammar Camp Idol, Punctuation Superhero Skits, Concentration, Initial Sentences, a Scavenger Hunt, and a few other ideas to keep the competition going.

And this is how seventh and eighth grade students spent their last days in our English class. Our class periods were a series of races, contests, and other competitions, all involving grammar. These days of competition in class gave me a buffer of time to grade those final writing assignments with no new work coming in.

So, next year, when that last week of school looms near, think about trying your own version of Grammar Camp. Better yet, use mine from Enter the Rubber Chickens. It will make that last week or those last few days of school fun for you and your students. It will keep everyone engaged through the final minutes of the school year. And you may find that you are not counting down the hours, but enjoying the competition.

Happy Summer.