Nouns, Nouns All Around!

Right now we are learning all about nouns!  Honestly, we find this so much fun (as nerdy as that sounds!)  There are just so many fun activities and ways to teach parts of speech that we are constantly coming up with more and more ideas!  We watched a Brainpop, Jr. movie about nouns (on our smartboard) to introduce the topic, they can't get enough of Annie and Moby (and neither can we)!  If you haven't checked out Brainpop you really should, there are a ton of topics and subjects and they are all aligned with the state standards so you can search them by topic or by standard.  They have easy quizzes and hard quizzes that you can take with your class after the video as well as follow up activities and practice pages.  You need a subscription to use most of the resources but some are free.  Here is a link in case you are interested in checking it out...

Mrs. Biel also found a great song to help the students memorize the definition of a noun.  It's pretty catchy if I do say so myself :)  The kids really enjoyed it, they have been singing it all week!  Maybe you can use it in your classroom!  We play it on the smartboard and give the students the lyrics to take home with them....

Last but not least, we have our noun centers.  We came up with these a few years ago and they turned out really cute!  We have five different centers and they are differentiated for the students.  The first center is an I-Spy Nouns: Write the Room Center.  

We usually only put two to three students at this center because having too many students wandering around the room at once gets a little crazy.  

The second center we have is a noun sort.  The students cut out the nouns and glue them under the appropriate category (people, places, things/animals).  

Center #3:  Mrs. Frost's mom is very crafty, and she made this board a few years ago.  It has labeled pictures and a Noun Board with headings: People, Places, Things/Animals, Not a Noun.  The students have to identify the picture and velcro it to the board under the correct heading.  They also have to record each of them onto their recording sheet.  Here is a picture of the students in action.  

Center #4:  Noun Scattergories

We have dice with different letters on each.  The students have a recording sheet with a place for the letter and four boxes under each.  They take turns rolling the dice to come up with a letter.  They record the letter and then have to think of four nouns starting with that letter and write them on their recording sheet.  Here are some pictures...

Our last center is our favorite.  We ordered these paper bodies a few years ago and weren't sure exactly what we were going to use them for, but we found something!  These actually serve a dual purpose.  We use them as a noun center.  We have the students label all the nouns on the bodies (i.e. shoulders, eyes, legs, thigh, foot, toes, etc.).  We make sure to remind them to keep it appropriate, not that we need to of course ;)  We also have the students put their names on the back of their "bodies" and we use them when we get to verbs.  They also use these when we get to verbs.  They record the verbs for each body part on the back (i.e. kick, throw, digest, chew).  Here is a picture of an example...

We have follow up worksheets for each of these centers.  These are all different levels so this is another way we differentiate the work at each center.  The students did such a nice job with all of these!  What are some ways you teach nouns in your classroom?  Do you have any good center ideas to add?