How to teach the parts of speech

Why this matters

An elementary student can recite that a noun is a person, place or thing and still file "longing" under Nouns, because a longing sounds like a thing. A word's job depends on the sentence it sits in, and a worksheet only checks the sentences someone chose ahead of time. When the mix-up happens in the student's own book, nobody catches it, and the teacher has to wait for quiz day to find out.

Parts of speech

A word's part of speech is the job it does in its sentence. The sort in this activity uses four jobs (Purdue OWL):

• A noun names a person, place or thing, and answers who or what.
• A verb shows an action or a state of being.
• An adjective describes a noun or pronoun.
• An adverb describes a verb or an adjective, and answers how, when, why or where.

The same word can do different jobs in different sentences. "Hop" is a noun in "he gave a big hop sideways" and a verb in "can you hop on your hind legs?"

In the Flint activity, each student photographs a page of the book they're reading, and Sparky builds a drag-and-drop sort from eight words on it, each shown with its sentence. A worksheet or game built on someone else's sentences can mark a word wrong, but it can't ask about the student's own sentence. When a student drops a word in the wrong bin, Sparky quotes that word's sentence from the student's page and asks what the word is doing there. A student who sorts every word correctly gets a harder question: find a word on their pages that does two jobs.

Sam's pages from The Velveteen Rabbit

Sam is an elementary student who loves animals, so he picked The Velveteen Rabbit for independent reading. He can define all four parts of speech. He believes that any word that can name a thing must be a noun.

The whole class gets the same greeting and the same steps: photograph a page or two, sort eight words from it, tell Sparky which bin each word went in, find a word that does two jobs, and write a sentence that uses all four parts of speech. Because each student photographs their own book, every sorter in the class holds different words, and Sparky's next message depends on what that student just wrote.

Sparky uses the words on Sam's pagesSparky sends Sam back to his own sentencesA right answer gets a harder question

S

Sam

Interest: Animals, so he picked a book about a toy rabbitStarting point: Thinks a word that can name a thing is always a noun

Sparky

Hi! I'm so excited to work with your book today! Open to any page (or two facing pages) you've already read. Take a photo of that page and send it here, and tell me the title of your book. I'll turn your page into a word sort. Let's go!

Sam

im reading the velveteen rabbit. this is where he meets the wild rabbits

Sparky

Your Word Jobs Sort is ready! Drag each word card into the bin you think it belongs in: Noun, Verb, Adjective, or Adverb. You can move cards around as much as you like! When you're done, tell me which bin you put each word in.

Sam

nouns are bracken, pincushion and longing. longing is a feeling and a feeling is a thing. verbs are crept. adjectives are dreadful and furry. adverbs are sideways and softly

Sparky

Great thinking! You got pincushion, bracken, dreadful, furry, sideways, and softly right! I love how you reasoned about longing. You're right that a feeling is a thing! But in this sentence: "all the while he was longing to dance." What is the Rabbit doing? Does longing name something, or does it show action/feeling happening? And what bin did you put crept in?

Sam

i put crept in verb. crept is what they did. oh. longing is what hes doing too. he was longing to dance. so its a verb

Understanding check

YES! You got it: crept and longing are both verbs! You figured that out yourself. Now for the fun challenge: look back at your page. Can you find one word that does two different jobs in two different sentences?

Sam

hop! he gave a big hop sideways. and can you hop on your hind legs. the first hop is a thing he gave and the second hop is doing it

Sparky

That is exactly right! In "he gave a big hop sideways," hop is a noun (a thing he gave). In "can you hop on your hind legs?" it's a verb (something to do). Same word, two different jobs! Last challenge: write one sentence about The Velveteen Rabbit using a noun, a verb, an adjective and an adverb. Then tell me which word is which!

Sam

the shy rabbit sat quietly in the bracken. rabbit is the noun, sat is the verb, shy is the adjective, quietly is the adverb

Sparky

That is perfect! Rabbit is a noun, sat is a verb, shy is an adjective and quietly is an adverb. And you even used a word from the book!

Filed a verb under Nouns, moved it after Sparky's question, then found a word with two jobs on his own pages

Sam is an example student, and Sparky's replies are shortened. The photo shows pages 9 and 10 of the 1922 edition of The Velveteen Rabbit.

What Flint did for Sam

• Flint read both pages in Sam's photo, and Sparky built a drag-and-drop sorter from eight words on them, each card showing its sentence.
• When Sam filed "longing" under Nouns, Sparky didn't name the right bin. It quoted the sentence from his page and asked what the Rabbit was doing.
• Sparky asked which bin Sam had put "crept" in, a verb he had already sorted correctly, and Sam used it to fix "longing" himself.
• Once Sam got it, Sparky asked a harder question: find a word on his own pages that does two different jobs.
• Sparky checked every label in the sentence Sam wrote about his book.

A teacher can't build a word sort from 30 different books by hand, and Sparky does it in every student's chat.

The activity page shows who is mixing up word jobs

Needs attention flags a student who is stuck while the class is still working, and points to the message where it happened. Once three or more students submit, activity analytics shows what the class did well, the mistakes students made, and a follow-up activity to try next.

Set up the activity for free

The word sort activity is in Flint's public library, with Sparky's guidelines and greeting already written. Open it, select Use activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and assign it to a class. Students photograph pages from whatever book they're reading, so you don't need a class set of anything.

For more reading and writing activities, see Flint for English language arts.