Fun Ways to Teach Parts of Speech
Knowing the parts of speech is an important part of a student's education. Students should be able to define all parts of speech and give examples. Just reading about these or getting lectured on the parts of speech is not enough. Provide parts of speech activities in your classroom to make learning meaningful and memorable. This ensures your students fully retain the concepts.
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Bean Bag Toss
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Teach students the meaning of nouns by allowing each student to provide examples of a specific noun. Students will participate in a bean bag toss game that revolves around nouns. Place a grid on the floor made out of a large sheet of paper. In each square of the grid, write a description of a noun. Words inside each grid can include "person," "place" or "thing." Students will form a single-file line and toss a bean bag onto the paper with the grids, one at a time. Whichever noun description the bag comes closest to is the one for which the student must give an example. For example, if the grid says, "place" the student can respond, "grocery store." Explain that students may not use proper nouns like the name of a specific grocery store. Make sure all students get a chance to act out a charade at least once.
Charades
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Teach students to recognize verbs and adverbs through a game of charades. On note cards, write down one verb and one adverb for each card. The verb should be an action word and the adverb should be a word that describes the verb. For example, a note card may read, "bounce/quickly." Have the class compete individually or in two groups. For the example given, the students who draws the note card would bounce around the classroom in a quick fashion, waiting for students to guess the correct verb and adverb being portrayed.
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Posters
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Teach students about interjections by assigning poster projects. Interjections are words that show excitement or emotions and are often followed by an exclamation point. Assign each student a word that qualifies as an interjection. An example could be, "Wow!" Then, have each student create a poster that shows the feelings associated with the interjection he was assigned. Students can cut out magazine words or pictures that reflect the interjection. If a student was assigned the word, "wow" he can cut out photos of a person who shows excitement. He could also write write words like "happy" or 'surprised" on the poster or cut each letter of the word out of a magazine. On the due date of the posters, have each student present his poster to the class.
Newspaper Scavenger Hunt
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Teach students what a pronoun is by having students find examples of pronouns in a newspaper. A pronoun replaces a noun. Explain to students that the pronoun, "she" replaces the noun, "girl." Other types of pronouns to discuss as a class include "he," "they" and "them." Give each student a section of the newspaper. Have students highlight as many examples of pronouns as possible. This activity can be done as a type of scavenger hunt where students highlight various parts of speech with a different color. For example, students can highlight nouns in green, proper nouns in pink and pronouns in yellow.
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References
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