Saturday, December 5, 2009

Grammar: Noun, Verb, Adverb, Adjective

Yesterday we did the lesson on the Four Kinds of Words from Dorothy Harrer's book An English Manual for the Elementary School.




Under the lessons for Second Grade, she tells a lovely story about a little seed child who is woken up by a gnome early one spring. The seed child is so sleepy that she has forgotten her name and the gnome tells her it is "Violet." Then a fairy from each of the other elements comes to her and gives her a word: "Grow" from the rain, "Fast" from the air, and then lastly the sun fairy comes and gives her a color from the rainbow and it is "Purple."

The purple violet grows fast.

We added a page to our main lesson books about the four types of words: name, doing, how, and color. Since I'm teaching at a school with the Montessori grammar materials I used the colors for grammar in Montessori (noun is black, verb is red, adverb is orange, and adjective is medium blue).

Then we began the lesson on Doing Words, which is a wonderful lesson! You draw a picture of a child on the board and have the children in your class stand. They say in unison, "I stand." You write "stand" under the feet of the child drawing. Then the students name other actions that you can do with your feet and you write them by the feet of the child drawing. So on with the hands, eyes, ears, mouth, etc. Finally, you ask, "WHO does all these things?" The answer is "I" and you write "I" above the child drawing. Then the children do a page in their main lesson books with a drawing of themselves, labeled "I" at the top, and with all their action words. My students loved it!

Harrer really has written an excellent book and I recommend it for Grammar lessons in particular. There are no Grammar lessons in 1st grade; this subject begins in 2nd.

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