The notion of creating a wonderful and creative sentence has been an exciting source of research and intrigue throughout time. Many philosophers and writers have constantly worked and are still working on establishing a chunk of poetry, a story, or a poem that would embed the sense of an ultimate satisfaction regarding integrating accurate words and creating a grammatically precise sentence.
The incorporation and contribution of practical grammar and vocabulary tools towards creating a piece of literature with a better depiction of the conveying message are inarguably significant.
Tools of Grammar like Parts of speech, correct spelling of words, use of tenses and their modifications, and even many more are essential aids for expressing a user’s idea through language writing. Fundamental pillars of language and grammar are necessary for learning from a young age and lays out the basic principles of language conceptualization and understanding.
Kids and young students should be innovatively and effectively made to understand these topics of language growth so that a strong perception of language, communication, and writing skills may provide them with great strength from a young age. Activities and creative learning interactions also contribute to the fact that may help them gain a firm grasp of language learning skills.
Parts of speech for high schoolers and middle schoolers: Why you can’t skip this
The parts of speech are a class of words based on their function. The uses of these specific word classes help convey the idea and meaning of the sentence very clearly. The benefits of learning the parts of speech and being very well versed about it, especially for High and Middle Schoolers, are crucial. The age group of high and middle schoolers is a very creative age of a student’s life. It is also one of the most rejuvenating phases where a learner brings out their creativity and unleashes their innovative ideas.
A person’s skill of grammar is not confined to just writing skills, grammar skills are pivotal in effective communication, and better linguistic intelligence, ensuring to create a lasting impression on others. For instance, Writing an appropriate letter to higher officials obligates a noteworthy grip on grammar and its regulations. To orate an engrossing topic, one needs to be fluent in grammar to ensure unconstrained communication.
Being aware of the same, instructors stress on preaching these skills. Exploring the best age to master, middle schoolers and high schoolers seems to be befitting as these young adults are often enthusiastic, and thereby relish activities to grasp notions. Moreover, getting into a profession or a good college may require these youngsters to master grammar.
Criteria of selecting activities for improving Parts of speech
Various activities and classroom interactions can enhance students’ knowledge and understanding techniques to help them grasp the advantages of learning Parts of Speech. The undermentioned activities can be based on some critical categories such as:
- For making students realize the importance of parts of speech and their uses
- To improve their skills of writing and sentence frameup
- To bring out their creative skills and brainstorming ability
- To increase their vocabulary skills and bring out their innovative ideas
Following are the interactive activities for learning parts of speech for middle and high schoolers:
1. Imitate to friends: a part of speech activity
Be it be parts of speech or any other grammar notions, games and activities can ensure engagement. Further, ensuring teamwork can be further engrossing for young adults. To start this activity, students may be divided into 2 groups depending on the class strength and told to imitate the phrase given to them by the teacher. Candidates come from each group one by one, and a sentence including parts of speech is whispered to them. The student then tries to explain the sentence to their respective group by imitating its action. The group which guesses the most sentences and identifies the parts of speech in the sentence collects more points and is declared a winner at the end.
For example, a student gets a sentence named,” The girl is cycling along the road,” he then can imitate the action and describe the noun and other parts of the sentence in actions, but without saying a word.
2. Throwing the ping-pong ball
Throwing the ping-pong ball is a very creative and interactive activity for middle school and high school students that involves focus and good understanding to complete the tasks of this classroom game and activity.
Five paper bags or boxes are placed at one end of the classroom, each of them marked by different parts of speech classes. Eight balls are provided to the students, and a sentence is read out to the student who comes to represent their group or individually. The student first reads the sentence, and two minute time is given. The student has to identify the parts of speech and write the words representing different parts of speech on the balls.
The students then need to throw each ball into their respective paper bag representing the correct correlation of the word and its part of speech from a specific distance. The student has to complete writing the names on the rubber balls with the help of a removable marker and throw them into respective boxes within two minutes.
The teacher can provide the students with an additional 30 seconds before starting the two minutes; the student or the group that completes the most successful completion of the task per sentence are awarded points per the number of correct parts of speech matched and is declared the winner at the end.
3. Pass the ball
Passing the ball is an interactive and fascinating classroom activity. It helps students enrich their knowledge of parts of speech and their classes.
The game stipulates the ability to identify the part of speech of a word. To start with, learners are made to sit in a circle. Now one pupil is selected to start and is offered a ball. They recite a word, say a noun. Then this student throws the ball to another player. The second player who receives the ball needs to frame the sentence using the part of speech previous student mentioned, and then say another word of the same type (noun here). The game continues till all the students are covered. Students who repeat a word or fail to recognise it get eliminated for the next round.
4. Parts of speech Scavenger Hunt
The game mentioned above is an exciting activity that checks students’ memory and fast responses. The teacher reads a paragraph or excerpt from the student’s lesson book. The students are told to follow the reading attentively and watch for words denoting different parts of speech.
A specific time duration of 2 minutes is given, and the students are told to review the paragraph to keep in mind the basic words that relate to different parts of speech. The books are then closed, and the teacher asks questions pointing out the specific adjectives, verbs, nouns, etc. The teacher can further mix up the questions by asking to change the tenses from one form to another, or the comparative forms of adjectives etc. In this way, students’ response time in understanding various parts of speech can be found and understood. As a part of students, this activity helps them enrich their memory and get quite clear about the use and changing forms of parts of speech.
5. The bowl and the sentence
The bowl and the sentence may turn into a befitting activity to assist learners to build up sentences on the spot from a given set of words. It helps students identify parts of speech and understand their correct uses for sentence construction.
A bowl with different cutouts and words belonging to different parts of speech are introduced to the students. Each individual is called to choose one to two words among others present in the bowl. The student then has to frame two sentences on the spot using the words. Limited time will be given to identify the words and frame the sentence.
The student then has to write the sentences on the board and read them aloud for their batchmates to identify the parts of speech among the created sentences. This activity will not only help the students analyze their performance in framing sentences using different parts of speech but also enhance the skill of framing questions.
6. Dressing up a sentence
Dressing up a sentence is a very common yet exciting classroom activity for middle and high school students. This activity tests the student’s ability to think of various innovative parts of speech and transform a sentence into many forms using those parts.
A sentence is written on the class board, or the teacher reads it to students; the students are then expected to first identify the parts of speech used in the sentence like adjectives, conjunctions, adverbs, etc, and then try transforming that sentence into different forms, keeping the sentence’s meaning intact. In this way, each student’s interaction is included along with the enhancement of their brainstorming ability, and the whole class can participate innovatively to dress up the original sentence creatively.
7. Throw the dart game
Throw the dart game is an interactive classroom activity that allows students to participate in learning activities and fascinatingly improve their knowledge about different parts of speech.
A shooting dartboard is placed on the classroom wall marked by areas representing different parts of speech. Each of these areas also contains points associated with them. Each student gets to throw five darts and give an example of the part of the speech on which their dart lands. This activity can also be played by asking any random student to come and speak various simple and complex sentences from which different parts of speech will be identified by the fellow classmates. After identifying, if the answer they gave is correct, the student will get the chance to shoot the dart on the respective point on the board. The points are also calculated based on the area where they hit their dart.
This activity helps students creatively define each part of speech through an example. It also helps them test their knowledge of various classes of speech parts and engage them as they try to shoot the dart at the correct point to reflect their effective shooting and pointing abilities.
Conclusion
Parts of speech are an essential component of language grammar and vocabulary. They are the basic pillars of sentence construction and framework. Having a good knowledge about different parts of speech and being well-versed in them helps students enhance their writing skills, improve the art of communication and promote language-based skills.
Especially for students of High schools and Middle schools, they must be well aware of their uses and contributions in building up a sentence. The age of middle and high schooling is an interactive and creative phase of a learner’s life; becoming well intrigued about vivid aspects of grammar and language helps them bring out their skills in a fascinating manner. Being well adhered to the elements of parts of speech may help students become good writers and fine bloggers or even provide them with self-confidence gradually over the years of growing up.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,