All About Nouns

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling

• Ask students to define a noun. After taking a few students' ideas, explain that a noun is a person, place, or thing.
• Tell students that nouns found in sentences can explain who or what the sentence is about, where an event took place, and many other things relevant to the sentence.
• Write "walks through the hallway." on the board and ask students to identify what is wrong with the sentence.
• Call on one student. After they share their idea, say that we don’t know who or what walked through the hallway. Explain that this is because the sentence is missing a noun. Ask students what noun could be place in the sentence to make it complete. Call on a few volunteers.
• Ask students if they found another noun in the sentence.
• Share one more example with your class. Write "Tasha skipped to the." on the board. Ask students if they think the sentence makes sense. Ask them if they can identify why or why not. Explain to students that the sentence is missing a noun telling us where Tasha skipped to.

Guided Practice

• Explain to the class that they are going to complete a noun storm.
• Draw 3 columns on the board. Label your columns "people," "places," and "things."
• Explain that you need help thinking of as many nouns for people as you can.
• Record student answers while they share.
• Ask students to pair up and copy your graph. Tell students that they are to work on columns 2 and 3 and list as many nouns for places and things as they can think of together.

Independent working time

• Tell students that during independent working time they are to write out a short story about what happened at recess, lunch, or PE today.
• Tell students that you are going to set a timer for 2 minutes, and that they are meant to go through their stories and circle as many nouns as they can.
• Remind students that nouns are people, places, and things.