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English · Ages 6–7 · 50 minutes

Nouns and adjectives - naming and describing words

Children identify nouns as naming words and adjectives as describing words, and build noun phrases such as "the big red bus" to make their writing more precise.

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Success criteria

  • I can find the noun in a sentence
  • I can find the adjective that describes it
  • I can add an adjective to make my noun phrase more interesting

Key vocabulary

  • noun
  • adjective
  • describe
  • noun phrase
  • naming word

You will need

  • a feely bag of classroom objects
  • word cards in two colours
  • mini whiteboards
  • blue and green pencils

Curriculum links

  • Year 2· England
  • Grade 1· United States

Practice sheets

Generated fresh each time you press a button, and marked instantly on screen.

The lesson at a glance

50 minutes in all. Timings are a guide: follow your class.

  1. Step 1: Starter

    Feely bag: pull out an object, say a ball.
    8 minutes

  2. Step 2: Teach

    "A noun is a naming word.
    12 minutes

  3. Step 3: Guided practice

    Word sort: give pairs ten word cards: cat, fluffy, school, tall, ball, shiny, teacher, cold, apple, tiny.
    10 minutes

  4. Step 4: Independent practice

    Use the practice buttons.
    12 minutes

  5. Step 5: Plenary

    Picture it: one child reads out a noun phrase they wrote.
    5 minutes

  6. Step 6: Assessment for learning

    Say five words aloud.

  7. Step 7: Differentiation

    Support: work with real objects and only colour and size adjectives.

  8. Step 8: Common misconceptions

    Nouns are only things you can touch: places (park, school) and people (mum, doctor) are nouns too.

  9. Step 9: Home link

    At dinner, describe your food with two adjectives each: "crunchy green beans", "warm sweet rice".

1.Starter

8 minutes

Feely bag: pull out an object, say a ball. "What is it?" "A ball." Write ball. "What's it like?" Children give words: bouncy, red, round, small. Write them in a cloud around ball.

Do two more objects. Then point to the middle words: "These are names of things." Point to the cloud words: "These tell us what the thing is like."

  • ball
  • kite
  • apple
  • hat
  • bus
  • teddy bear
Each picture is a noun. Can you give it an adjective? A wobbly kite, a shiny apple...

2.Teach

12 minutes

"A noun is a naming word. It names a person, place, animal or thing: teacher, park, dog, pencil."

Give children a quick test they can use:

"If you can put a or the in front of it, it's probably a noun. A dog. Yes. A jump? Hmm, sometimes. A happy? No."

"An adjective describes a noun. It tells us more: what colour, what size, what it feels like, how many."

Model on the board: The dog ran.

"That's a fine sentence, but I can't picture it. What kind of dog?" Take suggestions. The scruffy brown dog ran.

"Dog is still the noun. Scruffy and brown are adjectives. Together, the scruffy brown dog is a noun phrase: a group of words all about the noun."

Underline nouns in blue and adjectives in green. Keep this colour code all week.

The rest of the plan

Guided and independent practice, the plenary, assessment for learning, differentiation, common misconceptions and the home link are free with a Crayonbird account.

  1. Guided practice10 minutes
  2. Independent practice12 minutes
  3. Plenary5 minutes
  4. Assessment for learning
  5. Differentiation
  6. Common misconceptions
  7. Home link
See the whole plan, free

Learning Wiki

Fact and opinion

A fact is something that can be checked and proved true or false. An opinion is what someone thinks or feels, and other people may disagree.

Inference

Inference means working out something the writer has not said directly, using clues in the text plus what you already know. It is often called reading between the lines.

Summarising

Summarising means retelling the most important ideas of a text briefly, in your own words, leaving out small details and examples.

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