Phrase Activities

Gerund Activity

Divide the class into four teams, and assign each team one of these four categories: subject, predicate nominative, direct object, and object of a preposition.

Write the following gerunds on the chalkboard.

Ask each team to write sentences using these gerunds according to the team's designation (the subject team will use the gerunds only as subjects, and  so on).  Allow a time limit of fifteen minutes, and then have teams share their sentences with rest of the class.

Prepositional Phrase Activity

To demonstrate how prepositional phrases are used to elaborate on a word or phrase, ask each student to write ten simple subjects (including articles), ten verb, and ten adjective phrases on separate 3" X 5" cards.  Place each of the three types of cards in separate piles.

Have students turn a sheet of notebook paper horizontally and divide it into three columns:

• subject
• adjective phrase
• verb

Have students create original sentences by drawing one example from each of the three stacks and writing the word or words in the appropriate column.  Allow students to share sentences with the class.  The word combinations may be unlikely, but students will see clearly how the prepositional phrases are used as adjectives to describe words or phrases.

Once adverb phrases have been introduced, you may want to adapt this activity to include both adjective and adverb phrases.