Sentence Editing Grammar Game for Years 3 and 4: Fix It
This sentence editing grammar game for Year 3 and Year 4 is Fix the Sentence, an interactive whiteboard game by Teach This aligned to the Australian Curriculum. Students correct verb tense, apostrophes, homophones, capital letters for place names and irregular plurals and past tense verbs. The game has 10 rounds, and each sentence is shown as word tiles with one mistake to find, such as 'The bird flyed over the house'. A correct tap opens an explanation slide with the fix. A wrong tap shows a gentle prompt and goes back to the same sentence.
It opens in Microsoft PowerPoint on any interactive whiteboard, panel or projector, with no macros, no student logins and no student data collected. A game takes about 10 minutes and works as the warm-up before students edit their own drafts. In a team battle, a bonus point for explaining the fix gets students saying the rule aloud.
Learning goals
- We are learning that time is represented through verb tense, e.g. she arrived, she is arriving.
- We are learning to understand that apostrophes signal missing letters in contractions and apostrophes are used to show singular and plural possession.
- We are learning to recognise and know how to write most high frequency words including some single-syllable homophones, e.g. eight, ate.
- We are learning to understand past, present and future tenses and their impact on meaning in a sentence, e.g. informative texts are usually written in present tense.
- We are learning to read and write a large core of high frequency words and use context to make correct spelling choices, e.g. homophones – know, no.
- We are learning that verbs are doing, thinking, saying and relating words and that time is represented through verb tense, e.g. she arrived, she is arriving.
- We are learning to understand that contractions are a part of informal language and that apostrophes of contraction are used to signal missing letters.
- We are learning to recognise that capital letters signal proper nouns and commas are used to separate items in lists.
Curriculum alignment
Australian Curriculum covers QLD / SA / WA / NT / TAS / ACT.
Differentiation
Modifications
Tell students which type of mistake to look for in each round, such as a capital letter or an apostrophe, before they search. Read the sentence aloud slowly and let students point to the tile with a partner.
Extensions
Ask students to write the corrected sentence and then add a second clause or extra detail to it. Students can create their own one-mistake sentence for a partner to fix.