Table of Contents
Conjunctions - Introduction
A conjunction is a part of speech that is used to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences. They can be one word or a few words. They glue words, phrases and clauses together and are made to convey two ideas in one sentence.
For more information about conjunctions, the types, examples, where they appear in the national curriculum – take a look here
Word Wall
Have students write down all the words they can think of that are conjunctions.
Remove duplicates, give them some example sentences using different conjunctions, and ask for more. You can also add new conjunction into the sentence and let the kids pick it out. Then create a wall with all the suggestions.
Link-Up Games
Explain to your pupils that they need to be in pairs for this activity in pairs and let them both write a sentence at the same time.
Then ask the whole class to use conjunction words to link the two sentences up and choose a winner that is either the funniest or the most surprising.
Bingo Conjunction Games
Kids love playing Bingo. You can make some cards with nine spaces and in each space, there’s a conjunction word.
When the teacher calls out words, students need to come up with a sentence using that word before crossing it off. Students with three conjunction words in a row win.
Wheel of Conjunction
Students spinning a wheel to answer questions on conjunction.
Each area on the wheel represents a category such as food, music, sports or any other area. Each question requires the student to fill in a blank that completes a sentence.
For instance: “I will do my homework (blank) eat pizza later”. You can also make it a multiple choice question by having “and,” “then,” “during” and “when” as options.
Challenge Games
It’s always good to use classic games like Hangman which encourage students to work together to guess conjunctions letter by letter, or word search puzzles that asks students to find conjunction words hidden in a page full of letters.
Grammar with Emile
There’s no better way to avoid marking hundreds of worksheets than using technology. Children love tablets and computers, so why not use them to help achieve goals and make life easier?
Grammar with Emile, for instance, provides a great conjunction assignment. The questions are aligned to the National Curriculum, and when pupils start to compete in multiplayer mode and collect coins to buy clothes for their Emile, the impact on attainment can be quite remarkable.
"SLAP-IT" Game
Write some conjunctions and transitions words randomly on the board. Divide the class into two groups and have one student from each group on the board.
Then, the teacher can say a sentence and leave the conjunction out. For example, “I didn’t do my daily running exercise ____ I was very tired yesterday.” The first student to slap the correct word “because” gets a point for their group. You can erase the word chosen and fill in the blank with a new one.
Sentence Correction?
Write some conjunctions and transitions words randomly on the board. Divide the class into two groups and have one student from each group on the board.
Then, the teacher can say a sentence and leave the conjunction out. For example, “I didn’t do my daily running exercise ____ I was very tired yesterday.” The first student to slap the correct word “because” gets a point for their group. You can erase the word chosen and fill in the blank with a new one.
Ticking Game
Ask students pass an object around the classroom. Set a timer for a minute or play a piece of music, and when the timer goes off or the music stops, the pupil holding that object has to complete the challenge. You may show students two flashcards, and ask them to use a conjunction to join the two things together. For example, a banana and an apple. The pupil will have to make a sentence using a conjunction such as:
Error Correction
Find a piece of writing, and mess it up by replacing all the conjunction words with the wrong ones. Students have to work together to find all the errors and you want them to focus on the conjunctions to make the piece of writing reasonable again.
Memory Circle Game
Ask your pupils to say something they like and something they don’t like, or two things they like or dislike. For example, “I like fishes but I don’t like shrimps”. Make sure that pupils make full sentences to practice conjunctions.
Then ask the next student to say: “He/she likes fishes but he/she doesn’t like shrimps,” and then the next student adds something of his or her own, for example, “I like cats and cars”.
- The game goes on until everyone has had a chance to speak, but they are out if they can’t remember everyone’s conjunction sentence.
Brochure Scanning/Reading
It’s true that you need some great reading activities that can be used as a nice lead-in to introduce transitions and conjunctions to your pupils. But you need to make sure that you have chosen the proper ones. A brochure or some kind (food, education, or even sports) is usually a good resource. The words won’t be too difficult, at the same time there will be enough conjunctions in the brochures for your pupils to understand how they’re used in English.
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