Sometimes it’s tricky to find fun ways to teach parts of speech. What exactly are they? How can students remember them? Why is it important for students to learn what they are and what they do?
A simple way of explaining it is that parts of speech are categories of words that play different roles in makings sentences. The most basic parts of speech are nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
Knowing which words perform which jobs helps students build better sentences and give more detailed descriptions when writing or speaking.
What are They?
Nouns
Nouns are words used to identify people, places, or things. Some examples of nouns are: dog, cat, school, store, Canada, teacher, mom, and brother.
We can divide nouns into two categories - common and proper. Common nouns are words that name people, places or things (ex. girl, school, city). These words are not capitalized unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence.
Proper nouns are words that act as the name of a person, place or thing (ex. Sarah, Riverdale School, Toronto). These nouns require capital letters as they are proper names.
Adjectives
Adjectives are words that describe nouns. Some examples of adjectives are: nice, small, furry, green, scary, and loud. Adjectives are used to add detail to our writing.
Practice describing some nouns in the classroom. Desk (solid, rectangular, white), Student (nice, friendly, smart), Hallway (long, narrow, noisy). Once students understand what adjectives are you can give them a picture and have them write 3 adjectives to describe it. Then they can trade pictures with a partner and each person adds 3 different adjectives.
Verbs
Verbs are action words. Some examples of verbs are: run, skip, jump, play, sing, shout, and dive.
There are different tenses of verbs - past, present and future.
In this board game students move ahead when they draw a card with a present tense verb on it. If they draw a card with a verb in the past tense, they stay where they are.
We often use "ed" at the end of a word to make the past tense, however, there are some irregular verbs that don't follow this rule (ex. sing, sang).
To make the future tense of a verb, we usually add "will" at the beginning as it is something that "will be done" in the future.
Create a chart together with your class and have them come up with a list of verbs and their tenses. Discuss which verbs follow the rule and which don't.
Adverbs
An adverb is a word used to modify a verb, and adjective, or another adverb. It usually ends in "ly". Some examples are: quickly, quietly, kindly, excitedly, and happily.
You can write some sentences on the board and ask students to add adverbs. An example would be: The boy ran. How did the boy run?
Students could write:
The boy ran quickly.
The boy ran slowly.
The boy ran happily.
Some Fun Ideas
Mystery Word Game
Students will require some practice distinguishing between nouns, adjectives and verbs. A fun way to practice this skill is to play a game. One game that your students might enjoy is a Mystery Word Game where they give each other clues about the word on the card.
Silly Sentences
Another fun activity is making silly sentences. Ask students to randomly write down two nouns, two verbs, two adjectives, and two adverbs. Next, give them a topic they will write about, such as food or animals. Then, tell students that they need to use the parts of speech they wrote down to make a sentence. Most often, you get a silly sentence!
If you are looking for resources to teach these parts of speech, you may want to check out my Parts of Speech Posters, Worksheets & Activities Bundle.
If you are teaching Grade 2, you might also want to check out this blog post: