Teaching Nouns: Noun Lessons To Get Students Moving

Middle school language art teachers: need a noun lesson? Noun activities are the grammar foundation for complex grammar lessons. A nouns lesson leads to study with possessive & apostrophe use. Secondary teachers need to know how to teach nouns online with a digital noun lesson plan. Digital noun activities for proper nouns, common nouns, concrete nouns, plural nouns, collective nouns: add noun task cards to online grammar lessons for middle school English grammar activities. Teaching nouns helps

Teaching nouns? Here are noun lessons you can personalize. I’ve even included how to teach nouns online! 

A noun lesson is typically the first grammar assignment of the school year. Establishing a foundation with grammar is great! With older students, I don’t spend many days on noun activities. We define nouns, recognize them, and talk about them, but! They key is never to stop a lesson on nouns. Use that domain-specific vocabulary throughout the school year.

What are some effective strategies for teaching nouns to students?

Some effective strategies for teaching nouns to students include using interactive games and activities, such as noun scavenger hunts or noun sorting exercises. Additionally, incorporating visual aids and real-life examples can help students understand and identify nouns more easily.

Can we teach grammar without a worksheet?

Yes! Activities should show students that grammar is an important skill with a variety of fun activities.

With noun lessons with older students, I spend time explaining the reasons to learn nouns. Why are we learning nouns? Dependent upon the age you teach, students need to be aware of nouns so that they can:

  • identify subjects (and other “noun jobs”). They then can apply knowledge to dictionary use.
  • understand possessive words.
  • work with noun clauses.
  • create parallel structure.

A longer explanation is that nouns can become adjectives and understanding proper and common nouns helps with capitalization (Italian bread). Using apostrophes and making words plural both require an understanding of nouns. As students create more complex sentences, they will create noun clauses (a language standard for high school students). Basically, teaching nouns never ends; ELA teachers only change the type of nouns we teach.

We teachers understand the purpose of nouns! When I plan noun lessons, I am sure to incorporate a discussion about the purpose of nouns.

Middle school language art teachers: need a noun lesson? Noun activities are the grammar foundation for complex grammar lessons. A nouns lesson leads to study with possessive & apostrophe use. Secondary teachers need to know how to teach nouns online with a digital noun lesson plan. Digital noun activities for proper nouns, common nouns, concrete nouns, plural nouns, collective nouns: add noun task cards to online grammar lessons for middle school English grammar activities. Teaching nouns helps

What about pronouns, verbs, and adjectives?

Elementary school lessons do a great job covering all the parts of speech. Still, older students might need a review of different types of nouns, plural nouns, and more before moving to more difficult topics.

Additionally, older students benefit from understanding nouns because their vocabulary increasingly becomes more difficult. Knowing how words work and change can be daunting, so grasping a word’s function helps with vocabulary lessons. With middle school grammar lessons, I teach nouns with direct instruction. With high school grammar lessons, I most often teach nouns with more complex concepts like commas or clauses.

For instance, nouns and noun clauses must also be parallel. With sentence structure studies, parallel elements are increasingly important. Student writing becomes muddled when clauses and phrases are not parallel. Basically, I know older students have studied nouns, and I share that fact with students.

Teenagers always ask why they are learning something, especially before we dive into nouns activities. When they question noun lessons, I provide them with these explanations.

When I prepare noun lessons, I follow a general format. My goal with any grammar lesson is to make the content apply to students. When I teach nouns, I work to include fun noun activities and to connect concepts to students’ writing. My specific process for how to teach nouns changes yearly, but noun activities normally include:

Noun lessons and noun activities should start with a grammar pretest.

Give a pretest.

Whenever I teach a new grammar concept, I give a pretest! If you’ve followed my blog at all, you know I believe in the power of data. When my students understand a concept, I don’t want to bore them with repeated direct instruction.

I don’t thoroughly teach the specifics of nouns every year (common, proper). Sometimes, my students understand nouns and have very few problems manipulating them. After the pretest, I judge if I need to include specific activities to teach nouns. When I don’t, we discuss nouns and might complete a few of the activities below quickly (five minutes). Sometimes I let students choose how they study. Finally, we sometimes have a discussion about nouns. I include the details of “why” we learn nouns.

As an important note: sometimes, students have poor experiences with grammar lessons. Since a noun lesson is normally my first grammar activity with a new class, I don’t bore them—my noun activities are hands-on and engaging. When students understand that you are establishing the foundation for their future writing, they are more likely to engage.

After I see the data, I might complete one noun lesson and move to the next concept. However, if teaching nouns is necessary, here are noun activities for older students.

Hands on grammar with sticky notes and graphic organizers

Try an interactive activity.

Fun noun activities exist, even with older students! A simple interactive activity involves sticky notes. I meet students at the door and I hand them a sticky note. Sometimes I hand them more than one sticky note, dependent on how big the class is. I ask them to write a noun that they see in the classroom and adhere the note to that noun.

You can be specific with it, or you can be very general with it: write two proper nouns, two common nouns, four nouns. It’s however you need to scaffold it for your class.

Everybody has the right number of sticky notes, they write their nouns, and then they stick them everywhere! My classroom is covered in nouns, and we love it. I end up with lots of Mrs. Moss sticky notes all over me; they like to label me because I’m a noun. Students come up with some creative nouns: the floor, the door, a random piece of chalk, a thumbtack. My room is just covered in sticky notes, and it’s really a good reminder to emphasize: they do indeed understand nouns.

I leave those sticky notes because we do something similar with different colored sticky notes with adjectives. (Students can describe the nouns.) You can also add the notes to anchor chart or infographic.

As we review the sticky notes, I generally mention collective nouns, proper nouns, common nouns, concrete nouns, and abstract nouns. Older students have heard that domain-specific vocabulary and only need a quick reminder.

Mentor sentences are a great activity to add to noun lesson plans or a noun unit.

Use a fun mentor text.

Bring in mentor sentences with a picture book. My favorite one to use for nouns is I Love You, Stinky Face. Older students normally get a kick out of it. (If you haven’t read I Love You, Stinky Face, it’s a Scholastic book, and a lot of times you can get it on Scholastic pretty inexpensively or borrow it from libraries.) Some key lines I highlight:

“Mama said, ‘I love you my wonderful child, but I had a question.” Right away, we have concrete and abstract nouns.

“‘Mama, what if I were a big scary ape? Would you still love me then?’” I take the opportunity not only to point out nouns, but also to mention the verb mood. Doing so helps me identify if students understand more complex portions of verbs.

“‘If you were a big scary ape, I would make your birthday cake out of bananas, and I would tell you, ‘I love you, my big scary ape.” With birthday cake, we have a compound noun. Using this picture books triggers those discussions in just a low stress, non-confrontational way.

Students find this story amusing, but most picture books will precipitate discussions about nouns. Mentor texts are a great way to show show students these words are everywhere.

Grammar task cards print and digital

Use task cards/stations.

Since teaching nouns is typically done at the start of the year, I take this opportunity to establish rules and procedures. When students work with task cards (normally with stations), students rotate around the room, and they each have their own sheet to complete for me. With digital or print task cards, I can organize some student to their iPads and others to stations for a whole group rotation.

Working in stations allows me to circulate the room, build relationships, and clarify misconceptions. I also have insight into our next lessons based on understanding. If I need to expand my lesson on nouns, I normally see that during stations. Simply talking amongst students clues me in to where I should review.

Literature lessons can help with grammar lessons.

Connect nouns to literature.

Grammar can’t just be this thing we do for ten minutes a day! Mention and work with the concepts, terms, and ideas by carrying discussions into the rest of your class. You can carry your noun lesson to other parts of class. Here’s an example:

Review literature by using the domain specific vocabulary “nouns.” I will put on butcher paper or on big poster boards key pieces to review from a story. If I’m doing “The Most Dangerous Game,” I’ll do proper nouns. I’ll label Zaroff, Rainsford, Ship Trap Island. Students will travel to noun stations, and they will review what each character did that way. You could make common nouns like jaguar or the bedroom and talk about what happens at different stations throughout. Another fun story is “The Monkey’s Paw.” The wishes are nouns, and readers can each wish a slide of a Google presentation to review what happened with each one.

Reviewing literature is a quick way to emphasize nouns. If you want to connect grammar to other ideas, you can quickly add nouns to short stories.

So often, older students hear grammar lessons and immediately believe something is wrong with their writing. Grammar and understanding language is much more than correcting sentences. Part of my job is to show students that I want to teach them about their language and to share domain-specific vocabulary with them. After teaching nouns, I have established the tone I want for grammar lessons, and I can easily move into pronoun and adjective lessons.

Teaching nouns is normally a pretty fun, quick unit. Like I mentioned, my noun lesson plan changes every year. I use the data from the pretest to start my noun activities, and then I continually assess where students are in their understanding. That grammar unit has an editable noun lesson plan along with noun activities.

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Noun lesson pictured on grammar teacher desk

Eight Parts of Speech Teaching Tips

If you’re teaching nouns, you probably more of the parts of speech. Luckily, I have a post for each part:

Pronoun Worksheets and Alternatives for Teaching Pronouns

Verb Activities That Don’t Bore Students

Adjective Lesson Plans: More Than a Grammar Worksheet

Adverb Lesson Plans: More than Adverb Worksheets

Preposition Lesson Plans

Teaching Conjunctions in Diverse Ways