Teaching Adjectives? This is Important!

What is the most important thing you can do when you are teaching adjectives to your students? Let them play with them!

It is easy to get caught up in the nuts and bolts of grammar and focus on …..adjectives are words we use to describe the quality, state or action of a noun…..zzzzzzz. Yes, I know this is what we are supposed to talk about but I am more interested in getting my students excited about using adjectives.

Your students can fall in love with adjectives if you give them the opportunity to explore their wide scope and beauty. Who doesn\’t like words like, dastardly, priggish, speckled, moaning, three-toed, warty, volcanic and custardly?

Here are some fun ways to play with adjectives.

1) Take your students out to the oval and let them get to know what batty, graceful, frantic, nervous, suspicious and cantankerous (and whatever else you want) look and feel like. Warm up with some easy emotions (happy, sad, excited) and then talk about what these new feelings are before they act them out. Who might feel that way and why? How is batty different to silly? How is frantic different to busy? How is suspicious different to unfriendly?

2) Let them write mini -plays or skits that demonstrate the meaning. Small groups can create a scenario where the word preoccupied (for example) is used. A boy reading a book walks past a dinosaur, a car crash, an alien and a pile of gold coins. He doesn\’t notice any of them because he is preoccupied. A preoccupied boy walks past the pile of gold coins.

3) Choose an adjective and create a piece of art work based on it. A wall filled with art pieces based on words like feathery, leathery, creaking, oily, scattered, dishevelled, concrete, wrinkly, hirsute, spellbound and monstrous make a very interesting classroom display and your students will get excited about what they and their friends are creating. Make sure each student does a different word and chooses something interesting that stretches them. Think overjoyed instead of happy, melancholy instead of sad, opulent instead of rich.

4) Cover a number of items (stuffed animals, furniture, sports equipment) with appropriate adjectives.
Small groups of students could be given an item and then a time limit to come up with adjectives that could be used to describe it. Strips of paper to write on and sticky tape would definitely come in handy. This could be just for fun or a competition to see which group thinks of the most.

For a different twist use pictures of characters from fairy tales (king, queen, troll, goat, pig, wolf, prince, princess, frog). If you don\’t have a picture then give each group a large A3 piece of poster paper and 10 minutes or so to draw one. The group can then write the adjectives around the drawing.

The finished posters and the paper covered items can be used by the class as resources in another lesson. They make great writing prompts.

5) Use adjectives to describe really scary or gross things. Using adjectives to describe a graveyard or an infected sore will get your students laughing, talking and thinking about adjectives. Here are some other ideas: vampire bats, witches, vomit, snot, monsters, giant spiders, eyeballs, maggots and leeches.

Author Bio: Click here to download free classroom ready adjective worksheets and lesson plans from Renee\’s website!

Category: Education
Keywords: teaching adjectives, teaching adjective, how to teach adjectives