Moving on from compound words, Summit first graders continue to expand their vocabulary as they learn 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 focusing on 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. Texts focusing on nouns such as A Mink, A Fink, A Skating Rink and quality children’s literature containing nouns such as The Cat in the Hat 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 stations, 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. Students are encouraged to practice grammatical skills at home through a variety of web-based games and subscriptions including IXL. Check out the photo gallery below to see some of the nouns we found and labeled in our classroom!
