The Parts of Speech: 7 Fun Ways to Teach It!
The 8 parts of speech can be challenging to learn. Here are 7 engaging ideas to help teach it.
1. Act Out the Parts of Speech (Hands on Learners)
Like many language arts topics, learning the 8 parts of speech can be an abstract concept. Hands on activities are great for your kinesthetic learners. Doing a skit can be a fun way to learn these types of skills, especially nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs. Depending on the level of your students, you could either present sentences to the class or the students can write their own. Students may need guidance to think about how exactly to act out the sentences. The “actors” can act out the sentence and the “audience” can then determine the parts of speech in the sentence. It’s up to you if you present the sentence first, or if you want students to guess. Watch as your actors and actresses make this activity even more fun than you had planned!
2. Create a Parts of Speech Comic Strip (Visual Learners)
There are several variations of this activity. One way is to have students focus on how to show action through their art work (using lines to show motion is one way to do this.) Another creative idea is to have them create a main character that is a noun or verb (or any other part of speech), and have him/her/it go on adventures. Great activity for visual learners.
3. A Day in the Life (Meet Ms. Adjective)
Interview an adjective! (Can also be adapted to use with other parts of speech). This works well for students with a great understanding of others (interpersonal learning style). Students take on the personality of a chosen part of speech and answer questions about their “life” (what their role involves). This can be done in pairs (interviewee and interviewer), or students may choose to use different voices.
4. Nature Observation
Students with a Naturalistic learning style are likely to enjoy this. This activity can be done either at home or at school. Students can name the nouns that they see, verbs that they notice happening, and use their senses to list any adjectives. You could do this using a simple list or students could create a chart that could then lead to sentence or paragraph writing.
5. Sing, Sing a Song
Parts of Speech Song: Students with an auditory strength or musical intelligence may choose this activity. Students write a song, either about the parts of speech or from the point of view of a part of speech. Bonus points for performing the song!
6. It’s a Mystery to Me…
- Mystery bag: For our tactile learners, this can be fun. However, I wouldn’t recommend anything slimy for students with sensitivity to sensory input! The teacher places mystery objects in a brown paper bag. Students put their arm into the bag (without looking!) and describe what they feel to a partner. The describing words (adjectives) are then written down and used to try to guess what the mystery object might be (noun).
7. Task Cards
For a fun way to practice parts of speech, try my task cards! (See link below). These cards are a great way for students to practice identifying parts of speech in fun ways that feel more like games than like studying or “doing work”. Any time that students are learning while having fun is a win for us! I’ve also included more activities below. Happy Learning!
The Parts of Speech: Buy Task Cards on TPT!
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Parts-of-Speech-Task-Cards-Grades-3-5-10920528
