Sophomores Create Picture Books to Teach Grammar Lessons

English grammar skills have a well-deserved reputation as being difficult to grasp, but Language Arts teacher Katie Cho came up with a fun and creative way to engage her Effective Writing class in both learning and teaching these often challenging concepts. Inspired by the children’s book Greedy Apostrophe: A Cautionary Tale by Jan Carr, Cho decided to have her students create picture books and read them to second and sixth grade students at Waldron Mercy Academy. 

“Being called on to teach others requires you to dive deeply into learning the concepts yourself,” says Cho. “My students first taught themselves these skills, presented them to me, and finally created books to teach the children at Waldron Mercy.” 

Dividing her class of 50 sophomores into groups, Cho assigned each a different grammar skill: subject-verb agreement, verb tense shift, subjective and objective pronouns (who/ whom) and misplaced modifiers. 

For the assignment—which resulted in 12 delightful books—requirements included developing a story that was at least 15 pages long, complete with a beginning, middle and end; a main character that connected directly to the grammar concept; art to match the events of the story; and of course, demonstration of perfect grammar.