Daily Grammar Practice Bell Ringers: Focus on Formal Writing | PDF

This no-prep, easy-to-implement grammar review covers common issues in student writing—active voice, third person, parallel structure—all the topics students need to succeed when writing formal essays.

Great for standardized test prep, too! This product is a sequel to the best-selling Daily Grammar Practice for Middle School.

This packet includes a complete Answer Key and requires no advance preparation by the teacher, making it ideal for sub plans!

This product includes exercises for 9 weeks. Each page represents one week of bell ringers. Each week covers one topic. The topics can be covered in any order, but some weeks review topics covered in earlier weeks. For example, revising for active voice and comma rules show up throughout.

✅ This product includes a self-grading Easel Assessment Activity you can use in the following ways:

• a pretest to assess students' familiarity with the topics to be covered
• a study tool to help students practice and review the material
• an assessment to evaluate students' progress

Topics Covered

Week 1: Properties of Verbs: person, tense, number, and voice

Week 2: Active Voice

Week 3: Avoiding Wordiness

Week 4: Comma Rules

Week 5: Parallel Structure

Week 6: MLA Formatting and Rules

Week 7: Avoiding Plagiarism

Week 8: Pronouns

Week 9: Usage

Each day, students also analyze a sentence for one of the 5 levels of grammar:

1. Punctuation and Capitalization
2. Parts of Speech
3. Parts of the Sentence
4. Phrases and Clauses
5. Sentence Structure

Full-color Grammar Anchor Charts help you quickly review areas where your students might need a refresher.

I chose these topics based on common issues in my 8th-grade students’ writing. They are also topics typically covered on standardized tests and writing assessments.

Supplemental "Quick Notes" provide basic information to help students review a specific topic.

• The Five Levels of Grammar
• Proofreading Marks
• Comma Rules
• Sentence Structure
• How to Revise for Active Voice
• Tips for Using Parallel Structure
• MLA Style and Formatting for Formal Writing

This product also includes commonly misspelled words such as the following:

• their/their/there
• your/you're
• its/it's
• loose/lose
• probably
• definitely
• acknowledge

Suggestions for Use:

1. You can review and practice the topics in any order.
2. I copy the handouts double-sided on colored paper and place them in a folder by my classroom door. One of the first students to enter distributes the handout.
3. Students complete the row for that day—either working individually or in pairs.
4. After a few minutes, we discuss and check the answers together as a class. Sometimes I’ll have a student volunteer write the answers on the board.
5. We collect and return the handouts to the folder for the next day.
6. I do not take a grade on it. I use it for review and practice.

Best wishes always,

Linda Ricci

linda@elateachertoolbox.com

Check out my blog: elateachertoolbox.com!

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You might also be interested in these products:

Daily Grammar Practice #1 Bell Ringers for Middle School

Daily Grammar Practice Bundle
Daily Grammar Practice Formal Writing Middle School | Digital (Google Slides)

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I created this product because I had a 45-minute class period to teach literature, writing, grammar, and vocabulary in a differentiated classroom. My 8th-grade students had a wide range of abilities and backgrounds in English. I needed a way to cover a lot of skills in a short amount of time.

Every year, when it was time to write the research paper, my students lacked a foundation in the basics they needed to succeed on the paper. They were overwhelmed, and so was I! I needed a way to review the basics before we embarked on the research paper. I hope this product helps you, too!

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