And following that was a statement of fact ending in a period. Or, in other words, a declarative. And although it might be interesting to you as a teacher, as you’re well aware, not every one of your pupils is chomping at the bit to learn the difference between an imperative, and an exclamatory sentence type. So what’s another way to pique their interest?

Coach: You need to run this play. (imperative)

Nickelodeon NFL Slimetime and GoNoodle might have a few ideas for you to use in your daily lessons. In addition to activities designed around mindfulness, sportsmanship, math, and more, we’ve also developed this handy activity designed to help kids recognize the four sentence types. (Teachers, you can find the activity in Extras when logged into our Educator resource.)

Player (in the huddle): I’m calling an audible. (Declarative)

Most of the sentences have to do with football—and talking about football, or incorporating it into teaching sentence types could be a great way to engage kids that love the NFL, play fantasy football, follow players and teams, or whose families are big fans… kids that might not have otherwise been all that enthusiastic about grammar. It could be the touchdown one of your students is looking for!

Player (in the huddle): Blue 42! Blue 42! Let’s go! Hut hut HIKE! (Exclamatory)

What are some other ways to incorporate football into your planning? For more ideas and activities, check out our Nickelodeon NFL Slimetime page. It’s not super tricky! Like we did right in this blog post, you can start to incorporate sports-related sentences and have your class identify the type. Maybe split the class into 4 groups and have each act out these sample lines, or even come up with their own in a make-believe class football game. The end zone is the limit!

Sports Announcer: Good thing the quarterback decided to audible. That play was crucial to winning the game.