| Focus on these key areas when teaching adjectives | | | | adjectives that mean a similar thing (pretty, beautiful, |
| to your students. | | | | lovely). Now write down three adjectives that mean |
| What is an adjective? | | | | the opposite (ugly, unpleasant, yucky). |
| Adjectives are the words we use to add detail to a | | | | 4. Write your own lists of adjectives. Write 7 for each |
| noun. Adjectives give the reader more information. | | | | kind - color, size, taste, touch, and number. Now swop |
| To explore this students could do any of the following | | | | adjectives with other students. Aim to collect another |
| activities: | | | | 3 adjectives for each group. How can you get better |
| | | | at using adjectives?. |
| 1. Read three nursery rhymes and write out the | | | | Manipulating adjectives and connecting them with |
| adjectives (Mary had a little lamb, Humpty Dumpty had | | | | familiar ideas helps strengthen a student's ability to use |
| a big fall) | | | | them when writing. |
| 2. Look for adjective -noun groups in books the class | | | | The following activities provide opportunities for your |
| has already been reading - photocopy a page for | | | | students to do this: |
| each student and then ask them to highlight the nouns | | | | |
| and the adjectives. | | | | 1. Take a list of 10 or 20 adjectives from any source |
| 3. Read any paragraph and write out the adjectives | | | | and reorganize them into groups. Decide the types of |
| 4. Choose 5 adjectives and use each one in a | | | | groups yourself. You could group the adjectives into |
| sentence How do you think of adjectives to use when | | | | positive and negative. You could group the adjectives |
| you're writing? | | | | into ones that describe people and ones that describe |
| Students may understand what an adjective is but | | | | other things. You could group the adjectives into |
| struggle with thinking of a descriptive word to use | | | | temperature, size, texture and color. |
| when writing. | | | | 2. Make a set of twenty cards and write double sets |
| The following activities will give them practice doing this: | | | | of adjectives on them. Play memory with the cards. |
| | | | 3. Write 5 words to describe each of the following: the |
| 1. Draw a picture of a monster and write 10 adjectives | | | | pencil or pen you are using, the paper you are writing |
| that could be used to describe it. | | | | on, the chair you are sitting on, the desk you are sitting |
| 2. Write a noun in the middle of a page and write | | | | at and the room you are sitting in. |
| adjectives that could be used to describe it. Asking | | | | 4. For the whole class - Draw a large face on a |
| questions is a good way to come up with ideas. Who | | | | poster. Pin another poster next to it and challenge the |
| owns it? What is it for? How old is it? Where is it? | | | | class to write 100 words that could be used to |
| Where did it come from? What does it sound like? | | | | describe it. This can be a work in progress - words |
| What does it smell like? What is it similar to? | | | | get added as students think of them. |
| 3. Write one adjective on a page. Write down three | | | | |