Understanding the parts of speech helps people become clear writers and speakers. It can also help those learning a second language better understand how that language works when speaking, writing or listening.

Introducing the Concept with Younger Students (Can Be Done In English or First Language)

Make sure they understand what sentences are. Play "Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down": read a sentence or a nonsense phrase and ask students to give thumbs up if it's a sentence. Discuss how they knew which was which.

Continue the discussion and introduce the two parts needed for a sentence - the noun and the verb. Play the game again with students putting thumbs up when they hear the noun and thumbs down when they hear the verb.

Have them practice by writing and illustrating their own sentences.

Introduce details. Read them the same story twice - once with adjectives and adverbs and once without. Discuss which story told them more, which one had details.

Practice details. Work together to write some detailed sentences. Divide the whiteboard into six sections. Head each section with article, adjective, noun, verb, adverb, end mark. Have volunteers share ideas and write them in each section. Then students should pick a word from each section to write their own sentence. They should then illustrate their sentences.

Create a parts of speech code. Using printed worksheets or the students' own writing, students should "code" their sentences according to parts of speech, such as red boxes around nouns and blue lines under verbs. The class could even help come up with the code.

Relating The Parts Of Speech With Older Students

Encourage students to tell you what they already know. Bring in a translator if necessary. Have students tell you about parts of speech in their first languages.

Practice the parts. Using the code idea from Step 6 in Section 1, have students code sentences in their first language or in English, whichever language they are more comfortable in. Using the first language terms for the parts of speech as well the English terms.

Make posters. Have students make reminder posters for the classroom. Each poster should have the first language part of speech and its English equivalent, the definition, and a sentence with the part highlighted.

Send students on a scavenger hunt. Give everyone a paragraph and have each student search for the parts of speech. You can have them count, search for one part or all, whatever will be most helpful to your students.