Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Nouns have jobs.

It is very characteristic of my students to mix up the parts of speech of words, oral and written.  For example, did you know "foresight" is a preposition? As in, "I got some banging popcorn foresight the movie with my girls on Saturday."

Or, did you know "blonde" can be not only an adjective or noun, but also a verb? As in, "Miss Jaaaalensiis did you blonde your hair more? Like you know, add more gold paint?" 

The fact that there is so much confusion with parts of speech in every day conversation makes me apprehensive to begin this week's lesson on identifying the jobs of nouns in a sentence.  If getting my students to formulate oral sentences properly is this hard, I can only imagine getting them to diagram written sentences is going to be like pulling teeth.  Any ideas on how to sufficiently explain to an eleven year old who thought the word "vegetable" was a verb that nouns are more than just "people, places, or things," and are actually subjects, complements, and objects of prepositions? 
Suggestions welcome!  

Gotta love the Glitz and Grammar of teaching middle school, right?  ;)


2 comments:

Ashley said...

The only good advice I can give you is this: Please don't make those poor children diagram sentences. That literally was the worst part of grammar for me. The simple ones, sure. But when we got to those serious ones ( you know the kind, Ms. English Teacher) I wanted to cry...a lot! Don't do it!

stephanie said...

I'm so adjective I verb nouns has me rolling!! good luck! :)

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