Write several full sentences or a long passage of text on your whiteboard or in a worksheet format. Make the sentences as simple or as complicated as you feel your students are ready for. Then ask students to read through the passage and circle all the nouns they find. Repeat with the same or a different block of text and ask students to identify verbs, then adverbs, then adjectives and so on for all eight parts of speech. To encourage teamwork, divide students into small groups and have them work together.
Fill in the blank worksheets are a great method for giving kids additional practice identifying parts of speech. Write up a list of simple sentences and remove one word from each. For example, remove the verb from 10 sentences and the noun from 10 others. This activity works better for nouns and verbs than for other parts of speech, which can be ambiguous when removed from a sentence. As a class or individually, have students identify the missing term and supply their own to finish the sentence.
Play this game with your class to instill a sense of friendly competition and fun into your discussion of the parts of speech. Write out a chain of parts of speech on the board and have your students replace the chain of parts of speech with their own words to make up a sentence. For example, “noun, verb, adverb, prepositional phrase” could be replaced with “The dog ran quickly through the yard.” Award the first person to come up with an accurate sentence a gold star or another positive reinforcement.
To play this game, assemble eight paper bags and a stack of blank index cards. Label each bag with a part of speech. Think of at least 10 words corresponding to each part of speech either before class or as a group, then write down one word per index card and drop it into its associated bag. Draw one index card from each bag and have your class or individual students form sentences, using all eight parts of speech correctly. Make the game into a fun competition by awarding a piece of candy or gold star to each child who forms a complete sentence with correct usage of all the parts of speech.