grammar Archives - Psychowith6

The Best Free Grammar Websites

If your students struggle with grammar or find it boring, you’ll love these free grammar websites that can serve as a complete curriculum, a great complement to your studies, or a fun, occasional break. I’ve reviewed dozens of grammar websites (so you don’t have to) and have determined that these are the best of the best! If you’re looking for grammar games be sure to check out this popular post.

Grammar games are included with the Grammar Galaxy lessons your student will love!

Best Free Grammar Websites for Beginner to Upper Level Students

Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool – beginner to upper level

If you’re looking for a complete, free language arts curriculum, look no further. I’m crazy about Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool because it offers pre-planned instruction online. If you want only grammar lessons, students can complete just those sections.

Virtual Grammar Lab – beginner to upper level

I’m crazy about the Virtual Grammar Lab because it provides a search engine of grammar websites for grammar concept and type of activity. Search results tell you if the activity is easy, medium, or difficult. It could serve as a complete curriculum if you used a scope and sequence like this one from Easy Grammar. You can also sign up for a free account so you can track your students’ progress.

Daily Grammar – beginner to upper level

I’m crazy about Daily Grammar because it can easily serve as a complete grammar curriculum. Lessons include practice questions and quizzes follow every five lessons.

English Media Lab – beginner to upper level

While the English Media Lab is designed primarily for English as Second Language students, I’m crazy about the breadth of activities listed at this site for all students of grammar. If you’re working with a scope and sequence of some sort, this site will provide you with everything you need to teach and enrich the study of grammar.

Best Free Grammar Websites for Beginner to Intermediate Students

School House Rock YouTube Playlist – beginner

I’m crazy about these classic videos that I remember from childhood. If I remember them, our kids will, too! You can find the grammar videos among all the School House Rock videos on this Disney curated playlist.

The Music Room – beginner

I’m crazy about this website that offers easy-to-remember tunes that teach grammar concepts.

Grammar for Kids – beginner to intermediate

I’m crazy about Grammar for Kids because it provides links to games and sites around the web that teach various grammar concepts.

Grammar Practice Park – beginner

I’m crazy about Grammar Practice Park because it offers games to teach grammar concepts like proper / common nouns and sentence type for grades 3 through 5. Grammar Gold, also through Harcourt School Publishers, offers grammar downloads for grades 1 through 5.

Arcademic Skill Builders – beginner to intermediate

I’m crazy about Arcademic Skil Builders because it has the most game-like interface of the websites I reviewed. While it doesn’t offer a lot of games (Furious Frogs, Word Frog, Verb Viper, and Word Invasion are the true grammar games), your students are likely to enjoy them.

Grammar Gorillas from Fun Brain – beginner to intermediate

I’m crazy about Grammar Gorillas because it’s a great alternative to sentence diagramming. Beginners can choose nouns and verbs from sentences and intermediate learners can identify all the main parts of speech to earn bananas.

Mad Libs from Fun Brain – Beginner to Intermediate

Once your students know the main part of speech, they can do Mad Libs online. I’m crazy about Mad Libs because rather than just identifying nouns and adjectives, kids have to choose them. As with any Mad Libs, the results can be entertaining.

Grammar Ninja – beginner to intermediate

I’m crazy about Grammar Ninja because it’s a great way to entice boys to practice identifying parts of speech. Throwing stars get stuck in the words that are chosen correctly and “ninjas” are encouraged for correct responses.

Maggie’s Earth Adventures – beginner to intermediate

I’m crazy about Maggie’s Earth Adventures because of the real-life contexts for the games. Nouns and verbs get sorted into recycling bins. If a student makes a mistake, the sand gets littered with that word’s trash. The editing game involves helping a reporter get his grammar correct by retyping. Other games help students with prefixes and suffixes and word matching.

Grammar Blast – beginner to intermediate

I’m crazy about Grammar Blast because it offers grade-level quizzes (for 2nd through 5th grade) that mimic questions kids will encounter on standardized testing. Kids will like earning points for correct responses on multiple grammar subjects.

Grammar Man – beginner to intermediate

I’m crazy about Grammar Man because the site uses comics (in printed and movie form) to teach grammar concepts. There are some excellent printables on vocabulary and reading here as well.

Using English – beginner to intermediate

I’m crazy about this website because its many online grammar quizzes can also be printed as handouts.

Best Free Grammar Websites for Beginner to Upper Level Students

Quill – intermediate

I’m crazy about Quill because of its beautiful interface and the practice students will get typing their answers, rather than just choosing a multiple choice radio button.

Grammar Bytes – intermediate to upper level

I’m crazy about Grammar Bytes because its exercises offer teaching followed by funny responses to your answers and even more importantly, a thorough explanation for incorrect answers. Power Points, online exercises, and accompanying handouts are available.

Movie Segments to Assess Grammar Goals – intermediate to upper level

This is one of the most unique grammar websites and may be super motivating for your students. Movie clips are used to teach grammar concepts. There are exercises and associated worksheets.

Classzone’s Grammar Arcade – intermediate to upper level

I’m crazy about Grammar Arcade because it also has a true gaming interface that middle and high school students will enjoy. There are 10 concepts for students to study. Note that if you are sent to Classzone’s main page, you will need to click on California on the map and then click GO to access the grammar arcade.

Learn English – intermediate to upper level

I’m crazy about the British Council’s Learn English because it teaches students a grammar concept and follows the lesson with interactive quizzes which can earn points. Fifty grammar concepts are covered.

The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation – intermediate to upper level

I’m crazy about the Blue Book site because has a number of excellent free grammar lessons and quizzes and in particular has a great grammar pretest and mastery test.

English Grammar 101 – upper level

I’m crazy about this website because it can serve as a complete grammar course for your upper level students. Students must score 80% or better on quizzes before continuing.

Guide to Grammar and Writing – upper level

I’m crazy about the Guide to Grammar and Writing because it’s an extremely thorough treatment of grammar with associated quizzes that could serve as a complete grammar curriculum for your upper level students.

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31 Ways to Write a Bad Blog

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I know a little something about writing. Even though I’ve been blogging on and off for a long time, I don’t know how to write a great blog. Or even a better blog. What I do know from experience is how to write a bad one. Here are 31 ways to be sure and write a blog that stops traffic.

Write long posts. Writers making the transition from print to blog make this mistake often. Unless it’s very compelling content, readers quickly scroll and click on after about 500 words. This post is going to be a bad one. I promise.
Write daily. The blogging experts love to point out that the most popular blogs are updated at least daily. I think that’s confusing correlation with causation. Before you’re really popular, daily updates can overwhelm readers.
Write your diary. Many blogs read like a bad journal entry. “Today I went to the gym, did some laundry, and watched TV.” Even on Facebook, that’s not good reading.
Write old news. Readers want what’s fresh, even if that’s a fresh take on an old issue.
Write too personally. Reality TV has made it acceptable to bare it all, but there are still plenty of us cringing.
Write without spell check. If you can’t spell and you post your errors, your readers who can spell are going to focus on them and nothing else.
Write without regard to grammar. While composing your post in a word processor, pay attention to the error indicators. Here’s a great free online grammar course to get you up to speed.
Write to get your own needs met. These kinds of blogs come across like needy phone friends who never take a breath.
Write to invoke guilt. Asking why no one is reading or commenting on your blog is like having BO.
Write with unnecessary cursing. Even if you are comfortable with cursing, constant repetition of the same words is just bad writing, not to mention bad form when so many are offended by it.
Write without regard for others’ feelings. Criticizing individuals and bashing entire classes of people may generate traffic, but won’t generate any good will.
Write what’s controversial just to build your blog. Readers who appreciate honest, thoughtful debate will eventually see through you and move on.
Write without reading others’ blogs. Just as writers in other genres hone their craft by reading the best writers, so bloggers benefit from reading good blogs.
Write without building relationships. While traditional writers rarely engaged in relationship building, failing to make connections with readers puts your blog at risk. Responding to comments makes your readers feel appreciated.
Write without giving credit. If you steal others’ work, you will eventually be called out for it.
Write without linking to others’ blogs. Bloggers appreciate the links and so do readers who are looking for good content. Here is a great post on this topic. (I need to take this blogger’s advice.)
Write without providing resources. Giving your perspective on a subject is a great start, but readers want to know where to go for more information. I think 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is a great resource.
Write without humor. Even blogs on depression can be funny.
Write about how you spend all your time blogging. Many of your readers are bloggers who will be put off by your obsession, although many will stick around to see the train wreck.
Write amidst a busy, blinking background. Your readers with ADHD won’t be able to focus on your words and may need an extra dose of medication.
Write infrequently. If you don’t update your blog, your readers won’t care because you don’t.
Write like you’re perfect. Readers don’t like to feel like losers. Share your perfect photos of perfect people and places and your blog will be perfectly alone.
Write like you know it all. This is a shift from traditional writing, too, where experts were supposed to give comprehensive information. Readers like to share, too.
Write what you want to write about. Freelancers know they can’t sell pieces that readers don’t want. Blogs have to be about the topics your readers are interested in.
Write without paragraphs. This is equivalent to blending a main dish, sides, and a dessert and serving it up in a bowl. Mmm.
Write without subheadings or photos. Subheadings and photos are like keeping your foods from touching each other and some of us like that. I was going to add more photos to this post, but it messed up my numbering, so I will leave it as is in the interest of not appearing perfect.
Write to constantly pitch your products. Blog posts that start off talking about how they’re giving me something “FREE to add value” tell me that the sales pitch is coming soon and it’s a turn off.
Write sparsely to make room for long audio and video. Many readers (like me!) learn best by reading and don’t want to spend 15 minutes watching something they could learn by reading in five. I always appreciate the content in writing, too.
Write with links to inappropriate content. Like it or not, readers trust that you are not going to send them to offensive or spammy links. Don’t violate that trust.
Write without purpose. We have to know why we are blogging and even why we are writing a particular post, or we’re sure to go off the rails.
What should this one be?

The Best Free Grammar Websites

Best Free Grammar Websites for Beginner to Upper Level Students

Best Free Grammar Websites for Beginner to Intermediate Students

Best Free Grammar Websites for Beginner to Upper Level Students

31 Ways to Write a Bad Blog

What other mistakes have you seen bloggers make or have you made yourself?

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