Browse lesson plans

Animal adjectives

Students will describe animals as they review nouns and verbs associated with these animals. They will learn to use adjectives as they describe the animals. They will use this knowledge to write their stories about animals.

Format: lesson plan (grade 1–2 English Language Arts and English Language Development)

By Anita Baldwin, Ann Loftis, and Genevieve Kiser.

Awesome action words

Good writers use precise verbs to make stories interesting and vivid. In this lesson, students will learn to replace boring, redundant, generic verbs with more precise “Awesome Action Words.”

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–4 English Language Arts and English Language Development)

By DPI Writing Strategies.

Be the sentence: An interactive language arts activity

Students take on the roles of different words and punctuation and work collaboratively to create a complete sentence using correct parts of speech, word order, and punctuation. Students progress from simple sentences to more complex sentences.

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–4 English Language Arts)

By DPI Writing Strategies.

Diamante poetry using environments: Day two

This lesson will introduce and reinforce learners' understanding of habitat components within an environment. This lesson was designed to be used after the lesson "Animal environments: Day one."

Format: lesson plan (grade 4 English Language Arts and Science)

By Cheri Cole.

Discovering just the right word

Precise word choice helps show the reader a story and not just tell a story. The purpose of this series of lessons is to help students improve their writing style by strengthening word choice at the word and sentence level by adding adverbs, precise verbs, and specific nouns.

Format: lesson plan (grade 4 English Language Arts)

By DPI Writing Strategies.

Grammar Scramblers, spreadsheets, and parts of speech

Students use and create Grammar Scramblers with a spreadsheet in order to practice identifying and using parts of speech in a fun way.

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–9 English Language Arts)

By Tom Munk.

I spy nouns

This lesson will introduce students to nouns. The lesson will begin with a game of "I Spy." This game will help students to understand that nouns are things that can be seen and touched. Then the students will make lists of people, places, and things.

Format: lesson plan (grade 1 English Language Arts)

By Beth Edmonds.

Jazzy sentences

This is an interesting activity to help students jazz up or make their sentences more interesting by adding adjectives, adverbs, more vibrant verbs, and descriptive nouns.

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–4 English Language Arts)

By Helen Potts.

Let's hunt for vivid vocabulary!

This activity will be used to encourage students to focus on using an enriched vocabulary. During an oral reading of the book A Bad Case of Stripes, the students will search and identify various nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, dialogue tags, and transition words.

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–4 English Language Arts)

By Susan Byrd.

"Luscious lollipops" and other adjectives

The students will become familiar with adjectives by reading Ruth Heller's book Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives. They will also be able to use adjectives to describe an object in their own writing.

Format: lesson plan (grade K–1 English Language Arts)

By Pat DeMello.

Narrative writing: Using exact words

The learner will recognize exact verbs in literature and then use more exact verbs when writing a narrative.

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–4 English Language Arts)

By Georgette Rush.

Pattern writing using nouns and adjectives

In this lesson plan, students will think and write creatively using nouns and adjectives. They will experience all phases of the writing process.

Format: lesson plan (grade 3 and 6 English Language Arts)

By Susan S. Craver.

Sentence carousel

Adjectives, adverbs, and precise language help construct descriptive sentences. In this lesson, students will learn to construct more elaborate sentences that will enliven their writing

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–4 English Language Arts)

By DPI Writing Strategies.

Sequential vocabulary

Understanding words is necessary for success in every discipline. Learning to identify and define word parts empowers a student to unlock the meaning of unfamiliar words. This process teaches a life skill rather than memorization of definitions.

Format: lesson plan (grade 8 English Language Arts)

By Valerie Hendricks.

To be or not to be a noun

This lesson teaches students to categorize nouns as persons, places, or things. This lesson also teaches students to distinguish nouns from other words in phrases and sentences.

Format: lesson plan (grade 1 English Language Arts)

By Tasha Christian.

Trees of North Carolina

Students complete activities including tree and leaf identification, species comparison, online research, measurement, and creative writing in conjunction with monthly visits to the "Iredell County Outdoor Education Site"

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–4 English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science)

By Amy Luna and Kathy Beck.

Verb tense time warps

When students have inconsistent verb tense, they have a "time warp" in their stories. In this lesson, students learn that verbs tell not only what action takes place, but also when the action takes place. They will learn to identify past, present and future verb tenses and to check sentences and paragraphs for inconsistent verb tense.

Format: lesson plan (grade 3–4 English Language Arts)

By DPI Writing Strategies.

Wet your kinders' chops on the sound "op"!

Students will explore the sound “Op” with a reading of Charlie Parker Played Be-Bop by Chris Raschka and a showing of the PBS Between the Lions episode #130 “Be Bop,” which also features the Charlie Parker book and explores the “op” sound.

Format: lesson plan (grade K English Language Arts)

By Dirk Robertson.

Resources on the web

Action ABC's: Learning vocabulary with verbs

In this lesson that reviews the definition of a verb, teachers engage students in introductory game that activates prior knowledge about parts of speech. Students work in collaborative groups to make lists of verbs that begin with each letter from the alphabet.... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade K–1 English Language Arts)

Provided by: ReadWriteThink

Manipulating sentences to reinforce grammar skills

After a brief review session on the parts of speech, students learn how to manipulate sentences in order to modify and enhance the meaning of a sentence with antonyms and synonyms. This lesson assumes that students have basic knowledge of verbs, nouns,... (Learn more)

Format: lesson plan (grade 9–10 English Language Arts)

Provided by: ReadWriteThink