by Sarah Major, M.Ed
Grammar, phonics, and parts of speech often struggle for first place at the very pinnacle of the student boredom scale. When I was growing up, spelling and arithmetic also jockeyed for room at the top. Because my boredom/failure scale was so top heavy as a young student, these days I spend a lot of “working” time looking for ways to teach these types of mind-numbing concepts, ways that are not only easy to learn but hard to forget.
Personification really helps make abstract concepts memorable and helps to avoid the need for a child to just memorize and remember. We can also use color, story, and visual in this exercise, all of which are right-brain-friendly tools.
It makes sense to me to start with nouns when teaching parts of speech because very young children are first occupied in acquiring naming words for all the “things” they see and touch in their environment. Nouns are for the most part concrete and visible. While the young child is getting acquainted with what the object is called, he will also be exploring its physical characteristics.
Mr. Noun is dressed in a red suit, and he tends to say, “I am a thing. I am hot. I am i-t IT!”
Have your child act out being a noun, strutting around wearing a red T shirt and saying “I am a thing…I am i-t IT!” Acting this out is especially helpful for active/kinesthetic learners who need to do something physical in order for new learning to stick.
When practicing sentence building, suggest to your child that we choose a noun first of all. Write some nouns on cards for your child to choose from.
Verbs are great to follow up with after learning some nouns. Mr. Verb is paired with the color green and he says, “Green for GO!” Boy is he active! You can just see the movement in this version of verb. Chat about verbs with your child, making sure she understands action verbs such as "run," "eat," "sleep," "walk," "write," "draw," "sweep," etc.
With just the few nouns and verbs displayed, you can begin to put phrases together with your child. Choose a noun. Let’s choose "snake." Then ask your child for a word telling us what the snake did. He could slither, sleep, sun, eat, etc. A very simple idea is to use the word "ate." “Snake ate.” You can also pair the words "make" and "fire" to create the sentence “Make fire.”
Using a whiteboard and erasable markers in red and green, do the following activity together. Choose a noun and have your child write it on the whiteboard in red marker. Next select a verb together and have your child write it in green to tell what the noun did.
Over time you can venture into the more abstract meanings of nouns and verbs, adding to the simpler words you have already learned. These might include nouns you can’t really see, such as "dream," "thought," "idea," etc. To verbs you can add being verbs such as "is," "am," "was," etc.
Next we meet Ms. Adjective. Her color is purple because she “fancies up” nouns. She adds meaning to nouns, embellishes them, explains more about them, and in general adorns them. Ms. Adjective would never dream of going out without her fancy clothes, high heels, purse, and her hair in an up-do. She just loves, loves, loves dressing up herself and everyone around her!
A simple way to remember what Ms. Adjective does is to say, “Ms. Adjective adds to the object!”
Now that we’ve accumulated three parts of speech, we can do much more in terms of sentence building.
Back in my callow youth, we had grammar lessons every day. They included acquiring the skill of diagramming sentences. At the time, diagramming sentences bored me nearly to tears. Now, I find the structure fascinating. Had I been introduced to parts of speech through visuals and little story snippets that helped me easily understand, maybe diagramming would also have been fun. I have recently revived the art of diagramming because I believe that it helps children/students easily learn how to correctly construct sentences. This practice is something I first began to use when I was teaching Spanish. It helped my students learn the language much more quickly.
Here are examples of simple diagramming for nouns and verbs. You might try having your child write all the nouns with a red marker and the verbs with a green marker on a whiteboard.
SIMPLE SENTENCES – Subject (noun) and verb. Noun | does something.
Peter | sat.
Fifi | meowed.
I | read.
Mom | cooked.
Dad | worked.
Rain | fell.
Thunder | boomed.
Babies | cried.
Grandpa | snored.
Grandma | laughed.
Grass | grew.
Wind | blew.
Snow | fell.
Water | froze.
Squirrels | chattered.
Birds | flew.
DIRECT OBJECTS – Noun | does something |to someone or something else. Can see movement.
The boy | threw | the ball.
The waitress | took | the order.
Josué | passed | the football.
Susana | made | the bed.
Aunt Claudia | cooked | dinner.
The secretary | typed | a letter.
René | colored | the picture.
The oven | baked | the cake.
I | washed | dishes.
Dad | fixed | the car.
The fire | burned | the house.
The squirrels | hid | the acorns.
Uncle | painted | the house.
My teacher | taught | a lesson.
ADJECTIVES – words that “fancy up” nouns or “add to the object.” They answer What kind?, Which one? and How many?. Adjectives tend to come before the noun.
Here are examples of simple diagramming for adjectives. Have your child try writing each noun with a red marker, each verb with a green marker, and each adjective with a purple marker.
All these adjectives answer the question, “What kind?”
The tall boy | threw | the brown ball.
The blond waitress | took | the simple order.
The quick secretary | typed | the long letter.
The hot oven | baked | the chocolate cake.
The roaring fire | burned | the small house.
The brown squirrels | hid | the small acorns.
My favorite teacher | taught | a good lesson.
All these adjectives answer the question, “Which ones?”
Those boys | threw | that ball.
That waitress | took | the first order.
This secretary | typed | those letters.
This oven | baked | that cake.
These fires | burned | those houses.
That squirrel | hid | those acorns.
This teacher | taught | that lesson.
All these adjectives answer the question, “How many?”
Two boys | threw | one ball.
One waitress | took | several orders.
Three secretaries | typed | many letters.
One of the biggest pitfalls in writing for 1st or 2nd graders is that they tend to just say what they have to say in a most direct unadorned way. “I went to the park.” “I ate cake.” “ I like to play.” Using the diagramming frames will prompt the children to elaborate in their writing and prevent the need for you to nag them about using adjectives! You might provide your children with blank diagramming frames so that they can use them to make sentences of their own.
In coordination with practicing diagramming, you might consider displaying words according to their part of speech. This practice facilitates vocabulary acquisition and knowledge of the structure of language in a fun way! In my 1st and 2nd grade classroom, I used the walls as secondary teachers (well, probably actually primary teachers because children learn so much from what they see around them – maybe more than they gain from hearing a teacher talk!). We acquired one new word a day, used it, made sentences with it, and at the end of the week, put our new words with their neighbors on the walls. We filled the bulletin board on the far left with nouns as we learned them. The second bulletin board was for verbs and the third for nouns.
Finally, I just wanted to say a simple reminder that children love learning when it is kid-friendly. Take advantage of visuals, personification, little stories, humor, movement, color coding, and many other tools that will carry learning into the child’s brain in multiple pathways!
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah has been the Title 1 director and program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from fulltime teaching in order to devote more time to Child1st, publisher of the best-selling SnapWords™ stylized sight word cards. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
www.child-1st.com
704-879-4047
3302 S New Hope Rd
Suite 300B
Gastonia, NC 28056
Grammar, phonics, and parts of speech often struggle for first place at the very pinnacle of the student boredom scale. When I was growing up, spelling and arithmetic also jockeyed for room at the top. Because my boredom/failure scale was so top heavy as a young student, these days I spend a lot of “working” time looking for ways to teach these types of mind-numbing concepts, ways that are not only easy to learn but hard to forget.
Personification really helps make abstract concepts memorable and helps to avoid the need for a child to just memorize and remember. We can also use color, story, and visual in this exercise, all of which are right-brain-friendly tools.
It makes sense to me to start with nouns when teaching parts of speech because very young children are first occupied in acquiring naming words for all the “things” they see and touch in their environment. Nouns are for the most part concrete and visible. While the young child is getting acquainted with what the object is called, he will also be exploring its physical characteristics.
Mr. Noun is dressed in a red suit, and he tends to say, “I am a thing. I am hot. I am i-t IT!”
When practicing sentence building, suggest to your child that we choose a noun first of all. Write some nouns on cards for your child to choose from.
Verbs are great to follow up with after learning some nouns. Mr. Verb is paired with the color green and he says, “Green for GO!” Boy is he active! You can just see the movement in this version of verb. Chat about verbs with your child, making sure she understands action verbs such as "run," "eat," "sleep," "walk," "write," "draw," "sweep," etc.
Using a whiteboard and erasable markers in red and green, do the following activity together. Choose a noun and have your child write it on the whiteboard in red marker. Next select a verb together and have your child write it in green to tell what the noun did.
Over time you can venture into the more abstract meanings of nouns and verbs, adding to the simpler words you have already learned. These might include nouns you can’t really see, such as "dream," "thought," "idea," etc. To verbs you can add being verbs such as "is," "am," "was," etc.
Next we meet Ms. Adjective. Her color is purple because she “fancies up” nouns. She adds meaning to nouns, embellishes them, explains more about them, and in general adorns them. Ms. Adjective would never dream of going out without her fancy clothes, high heels, purse, and her hair in an up-do. She just loves, loves, loves dressing up herself and everyone around her!
Now that we’ve accumulated three parts of speech, we can do much more in terms of sentence building.
Back in my callow youth, we had grammar lessons every day. They included acquiring the skill of diagramming sentences. At the time, diagramming sentences bored me nearly to tears. Now, I find the structure fascinating. Had I been introduced to parts of speech through visuals and little story snippets that helped me easily understand, maybe diagramming would also have been fun. I have recently revived the art of diagramming because I believe that it helps children/students easily learn how to correctly construct sentences. This practice is something I first began to use when I was teaching Spanish. It helped my students learn the language much more quickly.
Here are examples of simple diagramming for nouns and verbs. You might try having your child write all the nouns with a red marker and the verbs with a green marker on a whiteboard.
SIMPLE SENTENCES – Subject (noun) and verb. Noun | does something.
Peter | sat.
Fifi | meowed.
I | read.
Mom | cooked.
Dad | worked.
Rain | fell.
Thunder | boomed.
Babies | cried.
Grandpa | snored.
Grandma | laughed.
Grass | grew.
Wind | blew.
Snow | fell.
Water | froze.
Squirrels | chattered.
Birds | flew.
DIRECT OBJECTS – Noun | does something |to someone or something else. Can see movement.
The boy | threw | the ball.
The waitress | took | the order.
Josué | passed | the football.
Susana | made | the bed.
Aunt Claudia | cooked | dinner.
The secretary | typed | a letter.
René | colored | the picture.
The oven | baked | the cake.
I | washed | dishes.
Dad | fixed | the car.
The fire | burned | the house.
The squirrels | hid | the acorns.
Uncle | painted | the house.
My teacher | taught | a lesson.
ADJECTIVES – words that “fancy up” nouns or “add to the object.” They answer What kind?, Which one? and How many?. Adjectives tend to come before the noun.
Here are examples of simple diagramming for adjectives. Have your child try writing each noun with a red marker, each verb with a green marker, and each adjective with a purple marker.
All these adjectives answer the question, “What kind?”
The tall boy | threw | the brown ball.
The blond waitress | took | the simple order.
The quick secretary | typed | the long letter.
The hot oven | baked | the chocolate cake.
The roaring fire | burned | the small house.
The brown squirrels | hid | the small acorns.
My favorite teacher | taught | a good lesson.
All these adjectives answer the question, “Which ones?”
Those boys | threw | that ball.
That waitress | took | the first order.
This secretary | typed | those letters.
This oven | baked | that cake.
These fires | burned | those houses.
That squirrel | hid | those acorns.
This teacher | taught | that lesson.
All these adjectives answer the question, “How many?”
Two boys | threw | one ball.
One waitress | took | several orders.
Three secretaries | typed | many letters.
One of the biggest pitfalls in writing for 1st or 2nd graders is that they tend to just say what they have to say in a most direct unadorned way. “I went to the park.” “I ate cake.” “ I like to play.” Using the diagramming frames will prompt the children to elaborate in their writing and prevent the need for you to nag them about using adjectives! You might provide your children with blank diagramming frames so that they can use them to make sentences of their own.
In coordination with practicing diagramming, you might consider displaying words according to their part of speech. This practice facilitates vocabulary acquisition and knowledge of the structure of language in a fun way! In my 1st and 2nd grade classroom, I used the walls as secondary teachers (well, probably actually primary teachers because children learn so much from what they see around them – maybe more than they gain from hearing a teacher talk!). We acquired one new word a day, used it, made sentences with it, and at the end of the week, put our new words with their neighbors on the walls. We filled the bulletin board on the far left with nouns as we learned them. The second bulletin board was for verbs and the third for nouns.
Finally, I just wanted to say a simple reminder that children love learning when it is kid-friendly. Take advantage of visuals, personification, little stories, humor, movement, color coding, and many other tools that will carry learning into the child’s brain in multiple pathways!
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah has been the Title 1 director and program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from fulltime teaching in order to devote more time to Child1st, publisher of the best-selling SnapWords™ stylized sight word cards. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
www.child-1st.com
704-879-4047
3302 S New Hope Rd
Suite 300B
Gastonia, NC 28056
Attachments
Image
Image
Image
