Keeping Students Engaged when Teaching Parts of Speech

Keeping students engaged when teaching parts of speech can be a challenge, right? Let’s talk about some fun ways to go over nouns, verbs, adjectives etc., without making your students want to snooze. Parts of speech can be fun!

Books

Mad Libs

Mad libs are so fun (and do you know there is an app?)! I’d recommend starting them with second graders and up. At the beginning of the year you may need to scaffold more with second graders, but they can do it! Check out this fun Mad Libs cat themed book – cats, dogs, or any fun Mad Lib is guaranteed to entertain students and even make them laugh hysterically!

Other Books

Julia Cook has a fun parts of speech book, including exciting illustrations.

This one is beautifully illustrated and a nice way to explore adjectives.

Brian Cleary’s books were a standby in my second grade classroom.

Ruth Heller’s bright and cheerful books are a tad more advanced but I still shared them with my students.

Keep it Fun

Here are some fun ways to make learning parts of speech into games, whether at school OR at HOME!

UNO Redux

Replace the numbers on a set of UNO cards with words (or just write them on with a sharpie). The game plays the same, but in place of using numbers, UNO players would match by color or part of speech!

LEGO Bricks

Sort bricks by color then write words on them with an EXPO marker, Sharpie or masking tape. Use use color for each part of speech. Then have students build sentences, naming each part of speech.

Other fun activities:

Use catalogs and magazine and have students cut out pictures that show different parts of speech. Take a large paper ( 11x 17) fold into four columns, label and have students glue the pictures in the correct parts of speech column. Alternatively, choose one part of speech and students can create a collage poster for that.

Fun videos

These would be great in class or via remote learning!

And there is a resource I created that you might find handy. It is a Google resource and consists of 2 assessments for each of 11 parts of speech activities. You can use it as a pretest and posttest, or as a learning center, They are self grading, paperless, and you get data immediately! Check out the sneak peeks below and click here or on any of the images to get more info. If you’re looking for Google activities that are more interactive and not Google Forms you can read this blog post for ideas.