Bad Tweet Tuesdays: Grammar Practice They Actually Want to Correct

There is nothing quite like making a typo in front of a room full of teenagers. You can spend an entire class period asking them to pay attention to the words on the screen, but accidentally use the wrong “your,” and suddenly EVERYONE is reading closely. They noticed. They need you to know they noticed. Apparently, this is the most important thing that has happened all day.

Ask them to proofread their own essays, though, and somehow that attention to detail disappears. Interesting how that works.

When I came up with Bad Tweet Tuesdays, I wanted to put some of that enthusiasm for correcting other people to use. Grammar practice can get painfully repetitive, especially in high school, where students have probably completed some version of the same exercises for years. I still want them practicing those skills, but I also want to give them something they might actually enjoy talking about.

So, we edit tweets. Specifically, ridiculous mock celebrity tweets with grammar mistakes built into them. There are familiar names, questionable sentences, and hashtags that absolutely did not need to happen. It gives students something to react to, and then we get to work figuring out how to fix it.

Correcting It Is Only the First Step

The routine itself is straightforward. Students record the original tweet, write a corrected version, and explain the grammar errors they found. After that, they write three school-appropriate tweets of their own using the same rule correctly. Everything happens on the slide and student response sheet, so students don’t need to open social media or have an account.

The explanation matters because students can sometimes fix a sentence without really understanding what they changed. “It sounds better” is a starting point, but I want them to be able to tell me why. Otherwise, I have no idea whether they understand the rule or just happened to guess correctly.

One of the examples starts with “Me and my friends is going to the movies tonight.” Most students will recognize that something is off. But when they change it to “My friends and I are going to the movies tonight,” I want them to explain both corrections. Why are we using “I” here? Why does the verb need to be “are”? If we take “my friends and” out of the sentence, does the pronoun still work?

That gives us something specific to discuss. It also lets me see who understands the whole correction and who caught one mistake but missed another. A correct answer is useful, but hearing how a student got there tells me a lot more.

Sometimes, students come up with different corrections that all work. A comma splice might become two sentences, or a student might use a semicolon or add a coordinating conjunction. We can compare those choices and talk about what each one does to the sentence. They get to see that editing involves making decisions, and sometimes there is more than one reasonable answer.

Now Make Your Own

Once we have worked through the example, students write three tweets that use the same grammar rule correctly. This is one of my favorite parts because they have room to be a little ridiculous. They can complain about something minor, invent a dramatic situation, or write about whatever school-appropriate topic they want. They just have to demonstrate the skill.

And yes, I am going to check whether they actually used it. If we are practicing parallel structure, writing three random sentences with no spelling errors does not quite fulfill the assignment. Nice try, though.

Writing their own examples gives students another chance to work through the rule. They have to decide how to construct the sentence themselves, which can reveal confusion that didn’t show up when they were correcting the original. It also gives us examples we can discuss together without needing another whole assignment.

The semester covers skills like subject-verb agreement, misplaced and dangling modifiers, run-ons, comma splices, and parallel structure. There is also practice with apostrophes, commonly confused words, and punctuation. The topic-by-slide guide makes it easy to find a particular skill when something keeps showing up in student writing.

I like giving students a chance to attempt the correction before we discuss it. Otherwise, the same few students can volunteer every answer while everyone else quietly enjoys having the work done for them. I want everyone to have something on the page before we start comparing ideas.

Make It Useful Beyond Tuesday

Using tweets also gives us a chance to talk about audience and style. People use fragments and informal language on social media all the time. Students need to recognize those choices and understand when they work. A fragment in a casual post might be perfectly effective, but I still want students to know how to turn it into a complete sentence when the writing situation calls for one.

The next step is bringing that attention back to their own drafts. If we just worked on apostrophes, have them check how they used possessives in a paragraph. If we practiced comma splices, ask them to look at how they joined their sentences. Now they have a specific thing to look for when you tell them to proofread.

I don’t expect one Tuesday warm-up to permanently solve every grammar problem in their writing. I do like having a routine that gives us regular practice and something we can refer back to. And if students are already so invested in finding mistakes on a screen, I am happy to give them a few worth fixing.

If you want to try it with your classes, my Bad Tweet Tuesdays: Semester 1 Grammar Warm-Ups includes the mock-tweet slides, student response template, and topic-by-slide guide. The resource is editable, so you can adjust the examples and references for your students. You can find it here!