4 Reasons Why You Need to Start Implementing Grammar Video Lessons in Your Upper Elementary Classroom

If you’re an exhausted upper elementary teacher looking to simplify your daily grammar practice, you, my friend, are in the right place - and the solution is grammar video lessons.

Before I attempted the use of videos, I STRUGGLED to find adequate time to teach grammar to my fifth and sixth grade students among all the other subjects I had to teach. Not to mention the students who would return from an absence and need help catching up (can anyone relate?). 

The first school that I taught at had a fairly decent, standard grammar curriculum that alternated between grammar and writing units (I chose to completely restructure the writing curriculum but will save that for another blog post). The units weren’t bad for daily grammar practice and lessons, but they did take quite a bit of time that I didn’t have to teach each lesson in their entirety - and still have time for all the other things I had to teach. My solution didn’t come until we started distance learning in 2020, and that was when I wasn’t looking for it. 

When we went online in March of that year, the requirement was that teachers had to host at least three Google Meets per week, and we could structure them however we wanted. I knew I didn’t want my students to come online just to be silent and listen to a lesson, so I decided to start recording my lessons and uploading them to Google Classroom for students to access. We then used our time online to connect with each other and have fun conversations instead! 

I started with grammar because I felt that would be the easiest to tackle. Once I started posting them, I was overwhelmed with the amazing feedback I received from parents and students about how helpful these grammar video lessons were!

When I realized how many other people were also struggling with finding the time to teach grammar in a time-sensitive manner, I knew I had to find a way to help myself - and them! 

If you want to save yourself tons of time and either minimize or cut down on your prep time for daily grammar practice for your students completely, these grammar video lessons can help you, too.

Here are 4 reasons why you need to start utilizing grammar video lessons pronto!

Reason #1: Grammar Video Lessons Can Help Students to Better Access Content

Our classrooms are full of students with diverse backgrounds and educational needs! Implementing videos into our classrooms as a learning strategy can help students access classroom content - but we need to be selective about what kinds of videos we choose and how often we are using them. It’s important to remember that videos should enhance instruction, not replace it. 

When I was completing my masters’ degree, I did a lot of research on multiple intelligences, choice, and student motivation. Many of our students are visual learners, and videos are just one of the many strategies we can implement into our instruction to support them.

Grammar is admittedly a tough subject that many students struggle with.

When I created the slide decks for my grammar video lessons and daily practice, I went heavy on the color-coding! Especially when we learned about sentence structure (for example, subjects and predicates) I would use different colors in my modeling of the content, and stay consistent throughout the unit with the colors that I used. 

Color-coding also supports English Language Learners, so it is helpful for a few different reasons!

Not only that, but color-coding is a strategy that has been found to be a highly effective way for students to remember information! Check out a study here!

Reason #2: Grammar Video Lessons are PERFECT for a Flipped Classroom!

If you want to get somewhere, you need to know where you’re going! If you’ve ever thought about trying a flipped classroom, grammar video lessons are the perfect place to start!

Lesley University describes flipped learning as, “A methodology that helps teachers to prioritize active learning during class time by assigning students lecture materials and presentations to be viewed at home or outside of class”. 

Basically, in a flipped classroom, students:

• Don’t receive the direct instruction at school 

• Direct instruction is completed at home through an instructional video, notes/presentations, or other materials assigned by the teacher

• They come back to class the next day having learned the material, and have more time to put it into practice with guidance from the teacher

The one downside of this approach is that students will have some work that they are expected to complete at home. However, this approach has been proven to improve test scores and students have been able to learn deeply and retain the material much better than in a traditional classroom. 

If you decide to try flipping your classroom, I suggest to try it out with one subject and go from there! I have never completely flipped my classroom, but I have used elements of it for different subjects, and started with grammar video lessons. 

That may look like your students watching a short grammar video lesson at home, and then coming back to school to practice the content with a connecting activity. 

You can read more about the flipped approach here!

Reason #3: Individual Student Review with Grammar Video Lessons

On any given day, a student will be absent from your classroom. And when they return, you’re tasked with catching them up to speed on the content that they missed - whether a day, a few days, or a week - so they don’t get left behind.

You may also have students who are usually in class, but need more time to process the material to learn it better, or go over it a couple of extra times.

Another benefit to implementing grammar video lessons in my classroom was that for that one content area, I didn’t have to worry about pulling students aside to reteach the content (unless they had specific questions, and I was always more than happy to!). 

Students were able to log onto Google Classroom and view all the videos for that unit under one topic anytime they needed. I would typically never assign homework in my classroom - the policy was, “Whatever you don’t finish in class is homework.” These grammar video lessons were especially helpful if they were at home working on an assignment, or reviewing for the end-of-unit test. 

This point connects back to the content being easily accessible for students - this one gave me a handful of compliments from parents about how accessible the grammar video lessons were, especially to review a tricky topic and help with homework. 

Reason #4: Instruction Can Continue in Your Absence with Grammar Video Lessons!

Do you feel overwhelmed with prepping sub plans? You are not alone - every teacher does at some point, so don’t feel bad about it. Instead, take action!

I remember putting sub plans together for my fifth and sixth grade classes as a newer teacher, and feeling so overwhelmed with everything I thought I needed to include to prepare for my absence I actually sat at my desk and cried because I felt like it would never get done and all I wanted to do was go home. 

The fastest way to overcome this is to start small and build a system, which will save you so much time in the long run. That first small step for you could be implementing grammar video lessons into your sub plans to make planning for your absence easier.

When you incorporate grammar video lessons into your ELA instruction, the results when you are absent are twofold: 

1. It saves you a ton of prep time. All you have to do is upload the video to Google Classroom or whichever platform your school uses and either print the guided notes and worksheet/activity, or upload them as well and have students edit the worksheet in Kami and submit online. 

2. Students know the routine and can easily follow it in your absence. When students know a routine, they will be able to follow it easily, even when you are not present. In my experience both as a fifth and sixth grade teacher and as a substitute teacher, students are very willing and enjoy helping a guest teacher out by explaining the classroom routines to them. You can even point out a couple helpful students in your sub plans who know and follow this routine well if your guest teacher has any questions. 

3. It is easy for a substitute, or guest teacher to follow. There are two ways you could have your students complete the lesson. First, you could have the substitute put the video on the screen and have the class watch the video and fill out the guided notes together before completing the practice activity independently. You could also opt to have students work independently at their own pace to watch the grammar video lesson, complete both the notes and practice activity. 

When you begin to implement grammar video lessons into your instruction, you’ll save yourself tons of prep time on days you will be absent. Your students will already know the routine and be familiar with the structure, so they can still continue with grammar instruction in your absence, and it is simple for a guest teacher to follow.

There you have it - four reasons you need to start incorporating grammar video lessons as part of your daily grammar practice! 

If you’re ready to get started with grammar video lessons as part of YOUR instruction, check out this free sample of one of my own grammar video lessons! It includes a sample of the video (not all of the video, but enough to get a feel for the content), and the guided notes. 

If you’d like to purchase the whole resource, it includes the whole video, teaching slides that come straight from the slide deck I use in the video (in case you would like to teach the lesson instead), notes, extra practice, and answer keys! You can find it HERE.