Are you working with parts of speech? Are your students faced with dozens of this type of task, where they identify the part of speech of the one underlined word?
Johnny stood on the ground.
Now, you know my motto. I don’t just want to make this merely challenging. I want to make it interesting (read more about that here)!
So, here’s what I did!
- I picked one word that could be used in multiple ways. It’s fine if this word seems simple, as long as it has multiple meanings.
- I wrote a paragraph using that word as many times in as many different ways as possible.
- I asked my students to identify the part of speech for each use of that one word.
Here’s an example using the word “ground” in many different ways.
When my mom saw how much pepper I had ground, she grounded me for a week. I just sat on the ground in my room, grinding my teeth in frustration and eating ground pepper. My life had turned into a real grind and I vowed never to grind that much pepper again.
Ridiculous right? But my kids loved this. It naturally led to this question: “Mr. Byrd, is it okay if I make one of these paragraphs?”
I Started To See Mistakes
These types of paragraphs also revealed holes in my students’ understanding. Kids who would ace the typical, simple examples suddenly found their brains being stretched. Rather than endless 100%s, I started seeing some 90%s and 85%s. I started to see places where I could actually teach my most advanced students something.
See, when we give students work that is too simple for them, they cannot learn! A task’s complexity must match the student’s ability. We need to move beyond their independent level into their instructional level.
Start With A Multiple Meaning word
Start with a word like “thank.” How can it be a verb, noun, adjective, adverb, and so on?
Cleaning the kitchen is a thankless task, but I thankfully do it because I know it helps my family. Even though no one thanks me, I clean every night. A sparkling kitchen is its own thanks.
Here’s one for “head.”
I nodded my head at the head waiter, and soon we were heading to our table. I looked at the menu and saw a picture of a head of lettuce under the heading “Our Specialty.” It sounded like a heady dish, so I thought I’d give it a try!
Finally, here’s “park.”
Parking a car at the park is difficult, especially when you park next to a parked dump truck while a parking attendant watches.
Oh, and we called this a Parts of Speech Party! I have a bunch of them premade for you at Byrdseed.TV (yes, they include the solutions).