One morning, I was helping a 7th grade student finish an assignment for Language Arts class. The assignment was to find and highlight the proper nouns in a passage. As we worked on the assignment, I realized that this student didn’t know what a noun was. So I needed to back up and teach what a noun was before he could find any proper nouns.

Since that session, I have realized how many students can’t identify parts of speech. Students who don’t know the parts of speech will have difficulty expanding sentences, editing, using context clues, and writing sentences in general. Without an understanding of parts of speech, students will struggle with subject-verb agreement.

In my sessions, I have the students create sentences. I have them start with a noun and then build a sentence from there. I supply a visual that shows them the parts of speech and tell them to create a sentence with all the parts of speech. Students receive a point for each part of speech in their sentence and then the student with the most points is the winner. A simple but effective strategy to teach and practice the parts of speech.

Click here to download the Parts of Speech Visual