Making a drama out of grammar (4)

The split personality of a sentence production!

This is a great activity using familiar language, drama andgrammar for children who are “moving on” in their language learning. Itreinforces the literacy work that schools are engaging their children with tounderstand the grammar of a sentence and the construction of a sentences  . It’s an activity that demands correctpronunciation and intonation of the target language and asks the children tonot just decode but also understand the message they read and to demonstratethis through performance! It’s also great fun!

Your class can explore the punctuation,the pronunciation,the meaning, relaying the meaning and the grammatical structures of a sentence through drama and language learning.

This works well with lots of contexts and content. We willbe using this on Tuesday with teachers to practise language around likes anddislikes of fruits and vegetable and the use of colour as an adjective. 

We willalso use this in the Summer final half term to practise ice creams(Year 4) welike to eat and to explain activities we can do at the beach (Year 5), usingmore complex sentences.

You will need to prepare the written sentences that thechildren will read and with which they will create their split personality of asentence productions. Make sure the sentences are made up of familiar languagethat the children have both spoken and read before.

The sequence ofactivities!

Take a simple sentence and see how much  we can reinforce and learn with this!

Je n’aime pas les pommes vertes!

Let’s look at thesplit personality of a sentence!

• This sentence has a punctuation personality
• This sentence has a pronunciation and intonation personality.
• This sentence has a performance personality (the message andmeaning of the words)
• This sentence has key characteristics. 

 PunctuationPersonalities

1. Discuss with the children the personality of punctuationin a sentence.This could be an activity that you have already triedwith the children in literacy.
2. Discuss the role of punctuation in a sentence. 
3. Ask thechildren to discuss the role of the punctuation in the sentence with you. 
4. Describe the characters of the punctuation (use the middle column in the tablebelow to help with this).
5. Can they guess which part of punctuation is beingdescribed? Now practise the poses for the punctuation?

Play a game of simple “Simon says “ or “Do what I say notwhat you see”(where you may not take the pose of the punctuation you say-children need to concentrate here!)

Punctuation	Personality	Pose
Capital letter	This character is proud and stands tall and knows it’s the beginningof a sentence!	Stand tall. Hands on hips Look important
Question mark	This character is in inquisitive ,listening and always wants to knowmore	Hunch or bend over One pointed and outstretched index finger and the other index fingeris on the cheek of the character’s face.  Inquisitive face
Full stop	This character puts an end to all the speaking. It won’t move andstands firm!	Standing firm Legs placed slightly apart. Hand out like a policeman asking someone to stop
Comma	This character wants to take a breather, collect thoughts and carryon.	Looks a bit out of breath Waving /flapping hands in front of face as if wanting to catch theirbreath
Exclamation mark	This character is “striking” , wants to make its’ mark in theproceedings and thinks it’s important	This character is standing upright This character has an arm stretched out in the air! The look on the face of the character is startled Mouth wide open!
Speech marks	These characters just natter on and on and are twins together.	Two characters, a slight distance apart , looking at each other. Hands are chest height and fingers are wiggling like they are typinga message.
Brackets	These characters whisper and gossip together and look on as the othercharacters wrestle of position and importance.	Two characters, a slight  distance apart , looking at each other. The two characters have a hand to their own mouths as if they arewhispering something to someone else.

Characteristics of the sentence

1. Ask the children to think about the role of specificstructures in the sentence. 
2. Ask the children to help you brain storm the namesand roles of nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and prepositions in asentence.  Again this may be somethingyou have already used as an activity in Literacy

Nouns name items and objects. They look proud andimportant

Adjectives describe items and objects. They lookcreative and artistic.

Verbs are the machine of the sentence. They standon the spot, pump their arms and look fit and active!

Adverbs add description to the verbs. They standnear the verb and support the verb with looking fit and active.

Prepositions add a position and a place. Theypoint and show direction.

Pronunciation personality

The pronunciation ( and intonation) of the target languagesentence helps the correct meaning to be conveyed.Discuss with the childrenhow important this is and practise some of the key words that you know will bein the sentences they will read and with which they will create theirsplit  personality productions.

Performancepersonality

Each sentence has a personality created by the meaning ofthe sentences. Each word plays a role in this personality.

1. Practise with thechildren ways to act out some of the key language they will be reading in thesentences you have prepared. 
2. Discuss with the children whether the key languageis a noun, a verb, an adjective etcetra too!

Split personality of a sentence production

1. Now divide your class into four groups. 
2. Give each group a specific role so you havea group investigating the punctuation personalities , another investigating thepronunciation personalities , another investigating the characteristics, andfinally a group investing the performance personality.
3. Showthe first sentence. Can each group create the performance that demonstrates thepersonality they are investigating? 
4. Watch each performance separately.
5. Now runthe performances together so you have four different performances at the sametime all about the same sentence.
6.  The children must listen carefully to the group  performing the "pronunciation personality" part of the production. All the performances need tobe in synch!

Change the sentence, swap round the groups and start the“Split personality of a sentence production” again!