Subject: English-Language Arts
Grade Level: 2nd, 3rd, & 4th
Note:
- This lesson can be adapted to any grade level’s writing standards.
- Make sure the trading cards you distribute to the students have some kind of narrative about the player – not just statistics.
- Students should have a basic understanding of nouns, verbs, and adjectives before completing this lesson.
Objective:
Students will be able to identify nouns (common & proper), verbs, and adjectives.
Anticipatory Set:
- Write this sentence (or a similar sentence of your choice) on the board:
The fantastic Will Clark played baseball for the San Francisco Giants.
Instruction:
- Underline “Will Clark” and “San Francisco Giants” in the sentence on the board.
- Ask students what they notice about these words (i.e. They are capitalized).
- Explain that they are capitalized because they are Proper Nouns.
- Underline the word “baseball”.
- Ask students which part of speech this is (i.e. noun).
- Explain that baseball is a Common Noun.
- Circle the word “fantastic”.
- Ask students what function the word fantastic has in the sentence (i.e. It describes Will Clark).
- Explain that fantastic is an adjective and that adjectives are describing words…they describe nouns.
- Put a box around the word “played”.
- Ask the students if they can do this…”Can you play?”
- Explain that it is a verb because it is an action word.
Guided Practice:
- Write another sentence on the board making sure to include at least one common noun, one proper noun, one verb, and one adjective.
- Have the students use mini-whiteboards if available (or pencil & paper) to write the nouns in the sentence and turn their whiteboard to show you.
- Ask the students to write the verb on their whiteboard/paper and show you.
- Ask the students to write the adjective(s) on their whiteboard/paper and show you.
- Continue this practice by writing more sentences on the board as needed.
Independent Practice:
- Pass out sports trading cards to each student. (Two or three cards per student would be ideal).
- Have the students fill in the Parts of Speech chart by finding common nouns, proper nouns, verbs, and adjectives written on the back of the trading card.
Closure:
- Call on a student to read a sentence from the back of his/her trading card.
- Write the sentence on the board.
- Call on a student (or ask for a whole class response) to tell you the noun(s) that should be underlined.
- Call on a student (or ask for a whole class response) to tell you the adjective(s) that should be circled.
- Call on a student (or ask for a whole class response) to tell you the verb(s) that should have a box around it.
