Sara Kash-Brown

Brenna Robinson
SPED 414
All About Adjectives!
Subject Area: English
Lesson Topic: Adjectives

Grade Level: 1st

Lesson Objective: Given a topic starter, the students will incorporate 7 adjectives into their
writing with 100% accuracy in 30 minutes.
Materials Needed:
-Paper/Writing Notebooks
-Pencils
-The Foot Book by Dr. Suess
-Whiteboards
-Dry Erase Markers
-Whiteboard Erasers
-Cut-Up Sentences
-Glue Sticks
-Name Sticks
-Projector
Anticipatory Set:
Invite the students to sit at the circle rug to listen to the story. Start reading The Foot Book; after
a page, ask what the word foot represents in the story. Say, What category does the word
foot fall under? Through the first questions you ask, review nouns, a person, place, or thing;
and verbs, actions, with the students. Once the students are reminded about those grammar
topics, read a few more pages of the book; but as you are reading, exclude any adjectives. Tell
the students, I think something is wrong with the book I borrowed from the library. It seems to
be missing something, but Im not sure what it is. Will you help me find out so our story can get
back to normal? The following pages will sound like this, Foot. Foot. Foot. Ask, Does this
page sound right? What do you think is missing? Tell the students, We will be discussing
adjectives in this lesson. Adjectives help our writing become more descriptive for our readers. I
need your help putting our book back together by adding in those missing adjectives. This final
discussion is used to transition to introducing adjectives to the students.
Teaching/Instructional Process:
Have the students stay at the circle rug during the input stage. Write a couple of the sentences
from The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss on the board with blanks where the adjectives should go.
Show the children the pictures from the book and ask them to describe the foot/feet. Ask, Who
can describe or tell me about this foot in my picture? What would Dr. Seuss have wanted to say
here? Model for the students what is being asked of them by placing an adjective in the blank.
Say, I thought of the word small to describe the feet in the picture, what are some other words
we could say? Once half of the children have raised their hands, say Whisper your ideas in
your hands while I draw a stick to call on a friend. After drawing a name stick, check to make
sure that the particular student is ready to answer, call on the student, and write his or her idea

in the blank on the board. Proceed to pull two more sticks and call on two other students with
different ideas and write their adjectives in the blank. Say, Lets see what adjective Dr. Seuss
used here. Read the sentence making sure to include the original adjective in the book. Tell the
students, The words our friends came up with are called adjectives. Lets clap that word and
say it three time together. Adjectives. Adjectives. Adjectives. Now these adjectives are words
that help describe our nouns. Not all the feet in our story are the same right? But we wouldnt
know this unless Dr. Seuss used different adjectives to help describe them to the reader.
Transition into modeling a cut-up sentence for the class. (A cut-up sentence is a pre-written
sentence where each word is cut up separately.) Friends move your attention up to the screen
where you can see the cut up sentence example I have for you. Have the words scrambled in a
pile and put the words into the correct order to create the sentence. Read the sentence aloud
together. The two, furry feet ran across the street. Friends, lets put a blue circle around our
noun in the sentence. I am going to circle the word feet. Now lets put an orange box around
our verb in our sentence. I am going to put a box around the word ran. And finally lets put a
green underline our adjectives in our sentence. I am going to underline the words two and
furry. By making all these notes we can identify the different parts of our sentence. Now we are
going to transition back to our seats and try our own cut-up sentence. Pass out the cut-up
sentence to the students and have them go through the same process we did together as a
class. Use the same sentence for all students. Have the students go back to their seat and get
out their writing notebooks and glue sticks. Now friends, see if you can put the words in the
correct order to make a sentence. Once the students have figured out the correct order of the
sentence, have them give a thumbs up. After everyone has put the sentence in the correct
order, describe the next step to the students. Now take out your glue stick and glue your
sentence in order on a page in your writing notebook. Once you have that done, circle the
noun, put a box around the verb, and underline the adjectives. Tell them, You can show me
that you are finished by drawing a picture to illustrate your cut-up sentence, until everyone in the
class is done. After everyone is finished, check for understanding.
To check for understanding go through each step of the cut-up sentence again as a class. Ask,
Friends what is the first step of our process? After half of the children have raised their hands,
call on a friend to answer. Look for an answer similar to placing the sentence in the correct
order. Great! Who can tell me the word they circled for our noun in the sentence? After half of
the children have raised their hands, call on a friend to answer. Look for the answer with the
correct noun in the sentence. Say, Class show me if you agree or disagree with that word by
giving me a thumbs up or thumbs down. If answer is incorrect, redirect student and ask another
child for their idea. Continue this same type of process for the verbs and adjectives in the
sentence. End with, Congratulations friends! We now know how to identify the three parts of
our sentence, including our new friend, the adjective. Now lets see if we can use these same
skills when writing our own sentences!
Guided Practice and Monitoring:
Have students write three sentences. Say, Friends I want you to write your own sentence on
your whiteboards. Your sentence must include at least one noun, one verb, and one adjective.

Please use the same process with the circle, box and underline so that we can identify the parts
of our sentence. Once you are finished raise your board up in the air and I will come and check
it for you. After stating the directions, write them on the board so that students can use that as
a reference. The students will go through the process of writing a sentence, with the noun
circled, the verb boxed, and the adjective underlined, on their whiteboard, raise it up to be
checked, and get it approved by the teacher three separate times. Write a tally on their desk
with a dry erase maker for each correct sentence to keep track of their progress. Have the
students keep their final sentence on their whiteboard.
Closure:
Call a few students to come up to the projector and present their final sentence to the class.
The students will read the sentence, then show where the noun, verb, and adjective is. Ask,
What did we learn today? Call on a couple students to answer. If students are missing a key
point, ask, What is another important, crazy, fun, exciting piece of information we learned
today? (hinting with the multiple adjectives being used) To end, ask the students, When can
we use adjectives? Have a couple students answer the question. Compliment and thank the
students for their hard work and then move on to describe their independent practice for the
day.
Independent Practice:
Write two general topic starters on the board. Tell the students, Today, you are going to write a
story. This story can be about one of the two topics I just wrote on the board. You need to
include at least 7 adjectives in your story. Remember a story has a beginning, a middle, and an
end. Students will write their stories in their writing notebooks and turn it in once they are
finished.
Modifications/Accommodations:
If after going through the initial lesson there are still students who are struggling with idea of
adjectives, call them over to the circle rug and go through the lesson again in simpler terms
before allowing them to go into their independent practice.
For students who are English Language Learners and others who have trouble with language,
provide a list of adjectives they can use in their sentences and story. You could even add
sentence starters, transition words or phrases, and other parts of speech to a handout for them
to use throughout this lesson.
For students who struggle with behaviors and staying on task, make sentences appeal their
hobbies to keep their interest throughout the lesson. Rather than forcing a student who loves
cars to write a story about horses, allow the student to write their story about cars to boost
motivation. Make the topics broad enough to look attractive to all students in the class.
For students who really struggle with writing, give them a smaller amount of adjectives to write
in their story. Tell them to incorporate three or four adjectives in their story. This allows them to

not have as large of a task, but will allow you to see if they understand the concept of
adjectives.
If there is a student who is unable to write because of a disability, allow the student to say the
sentences out loud for the teacher to listen to. Ask the student each part of speech in their
sentence verbally. If there would be a student who finishes their task early, this student could
write the sentences down for the student who is unable to write.