Teaching Nouns

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A noun is a ‘naming word’. If refers to things that you can see, touch, hear, taste, smell, think about or experience. If it is something you can perceive using your senses (book, noise, odour, sourness), it is a concrete noun. It if something you can think about or experience (love, justice, happiness), it is an abstract noun.

A proper noun is the specific name given to a person, place, organisation or thing. Proper nouns are written beginning with a capital letter (Sydney, Peter, Tasmania, France, Swan River, Falls Road). If it is general or non-specific, then it is a common noun (city, boy, state, county, river, road).

One way of checking if a word is a common noun is to see if it makes sense placing the word ‘the’ in front and making a sentence.

An easy sentence structure to use is:  The ______ is/are all around us.

  • The birds are all around us. The smell is all around us. The love is all around us. These all make grammatical sense so bird, smell and love must all be nouns.
  • The quickly is all around us. This does not make sense, so quickly must not be a noun
  • Just be aware that many words can be used in more than one part of speech. For example, ‘watch’ can be used as a noun (a time piece), but it can also be used as a verb (to look at).

Below are a list of ideas for helping students identify nouns.

Noun Scavenger Hunt:

Students walk around a given area and see if they can find a concrete noun for each letter of the alphabet. You can also leave out picture books as an additional resource.

Remind students to use all their senses and that for proper nouns to use capital letters at the beginning of the word.

Noun Sort:

Make a pack of cards with one word written on each card. Half the words should be nouns. Students sort the cards into Nouns or Not Nouns.

Simon Says:

If Simon says a noun, students put their hands on their head.
If Simon says a word that is not a noun, students put their hands on their bottom.

Crazy Nouns Stories:

Create a story template in which all the nouns have been removed. Students write in their own nouns to create funny, but grammatically correct stories.

Nouns Search:

After reading some text, have student find and highlight all the nouns.

Nouns and….

Challenge students to make a collection of words that can be used as nouns and as other parts of speech. Write a sentence showing the different usage of the words.

  • I turned to the right.
  • I used my right hand.

Changing Words into Nouns

Give students a list of words that are not nouns and a list of suffixes that change words into nouns (e.g., ment, ness, ion, er, or, ance).

Once students have changed the word into a noun, have them write sentences using ‘the’ to illustrate that the word is now a noun.

  • Move-movement: The movement he made with his finger was not noticed.
  • Happy-happiness: The happiness of her children was the mother’s main concern.

Matching Nouns to Proper Nouns:

Give students a list of common nouns. Students need to write an example of a proper noun next to each common noun.

Common NounsProper Nouns
river 
city 
boy 
girl 
teacher 
planet 
shop 
mountain 
month 

Matching Concrete Nouns to Abstract Nouns:

Abstract nouns are often associated with specific symbols or signs. For example, peace is often associated with a white dove. Provide students with a list of abstract nouns and have them write a concrete noun that is commonly associated with that abstract noun. For a more difficult version, don’t provide the list of common nouns.

Abstract NounsConcrete Nouns
peace 
love 
happiness 
sadness 
poisonous 
justice 
knowledge 
time 
strength 
wealth 
death 
communication 
wisdom 
slavery 
guilt 

Dove, heart, smile, tears, skull and cross bones, judge, book, clock, weights, money, tombstone, telephone, owl, chains, handcuffs.

Note: These are just suggestions.

Other Resources:

22 Grammar picture books for children

Proper nouns

Collective nouns

Collective nouns videos

Changing use of pronouns