Summit first graders are expanding their vocabulary and learning key grammatical concepts. Gaining a deeper understanding of various parts of speech, including nouns, verbs, and adjectives, will enable students to experiment with language by learning and using new words. We are currently studying nouns. Students have learned that nouns can name a person, place, thing, or idea. Identifying nouns by naming, people, animals, places, and things is typically a skill that develops more readily than identifying nouns as ideas. We will discuss nouns as ideas by focusing on relevant concepts such as friendship, happiness, strength, and beauty.
In addition to identifying nouns, first graders will be classifying nouns as common, proper, singular, and plural. Literature, such as A Mink, A Fink, A Skating Rink and A Cache of Jewels, provide a platform for discussing and distinguishing each type of noun. Brief videos and songs such as the BrainPop Jr. noun video and the School House Rock noun song assist students in understanding. Through centers, we will be playing games involving parts of speech, cutting and sorting pictures and words, illustrating words, searching for nouns in books, writing nouns, and selecting appropriate usage of nouns.