parts of speech

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Home : 2003 : August : 25

parts of speech
By Sari

I also used colors to teach the parts of speech. And I LOVE diagraming sentences!

I liked the colors because they can be expanded to include phrases and clauses.

These are the colors I used:

verbs-RED (stands out the
most)
nouns-BLUE (including pronouns)
adjectives-GREEN
adverbs-PURPLE
conjunctions-ORANGE
prepositions-BROWN
anything else (interjections, e.g.)-BLACK
I chose these colors because they are the colors in an 8-pack of overhead or whiteboard markers. (Yellow does not show up, so I did not use it.)
I also posted cut-outs of the words VERB, NOUN, etc. using colored construction

paper.

Phrases can be shown with parentheses ( ). A prepositional phrase acting as an adjective would be set off by green parentheses.

Clauses can be shown with brackets [ ]. A noun clause, for example, would be enclosed in blue brackets. This allows you to show the parts of the clause in their colors (blue noun, red verb, etc.) while still showing the purpose of the clause as a whole.

I also liked the colors because if someone could not find the verb, I would say, "Find the red word." This allowed students who had trouble to get the right answers. It also made it easier for them to find all the parts of a verb phrase. (They weren't very good with helping verbs!)

Just be aware that students who are color blind will not be able to tell the difference and will need other support.