Identifying Parts of Speech

An interjection is a word that expresses emotion and is not grammatically related to other words in the sentence. In almost all cases, an interjection is set off from the rest of the sentence using an exclamation point or a comma.

When people think of interjections, they most commonly think that they are found at the beginning of sentences. This is true. Interjections can and do appear and the beginning of sentences.  

Example:

Yikes, that haunted house was scary! 

A preposition is a word that relates a noun or a pronoun to another word in the sentence. Prepositions help to indicate location (physical, time, etc.).  

For example:

The puppy sat on my lap.

“On” would be the preposition, since it tells you where the puppy was sitting.

At midnight, Noah craved a glass of orange juice.

At midnight indicates a location in time, therefore “at” is the preposition.

There is a pronoun that you can use as a substitute for just about any noun.  Sometimes it can be tricky to decide which pronoun to use.  Here are two things to think about:

Type/Gender (boy, girl, or thing): She and her are for girls.  He and him are for boys.  It is for things.

It's important for students to learn the differences between the five main question words: who, what, where, when, why, and how.

These are all sight words -- because none is really easy to sound out using phonics -- so it's especially important for students to use the words in writing. 

Encourage students to use the words correctly in their writing.  Also use worksheets that will push the students to use the clue words in sentences to identify the appropriate question word for a specific context. 

Before you learn what a conjunction is, you must be able to identify an independent and a dependent clause.  Independent clauses are able to stand alone as complete sentences.  An independent clause only requires a subject and a verb, but it must have at least a subject and a verb. A dependent clause is a sentence that has a subject and a verb that has been modified with a preposition (e.g., over, around, beside).  A dependent clause cannot be a stand alone sentence, and therefore is NOT an independent clause. 

Adjectives

Adjectives are words that modify nouns and pronouns by answering one of these three questions: What kind is it? How many are there? Which one is it? To modify means to make it more specific or change it slightly. An adjective can be a single word, a phrase, or a clause. Let’s look at some examples:

Every sentence has two parts: a subject and a predicate. The subject part of a sentence names whom or what the sentence is about. The predicate part of a sentence tells what the subject does or has, and it can also describe what the subject is or is like. The complete subject is all of the words in the subject part of a sentence. The complete predicate is all of the words in the predicate part of a sentence.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Nouns are words that represent people, places or things (including ideas and feelings). 

Examples: 

Languages are made up of different parts of speech.  Knowing the parts of speech will help you talk about words and understand grammar rules. 

Nouns are words that represent people, places, or things.

Examples: mother, school, apple

Common nouns are general items.  They are not capitalized.

Examples: cat, country, state

Proper nouns are specific items.  They are capitalized.

A synonym is a word that means exactly the same as, or very nearly the same as, another word.