Our Silly Adjective Zoo – Teaching Adjectives the Animal Way

Teaching adjectives can be so fun. It’s evident by my tons of adjective ideas. Adjective activities are so engaging because they lend themselves so easy to being funny.

Students respond really well to pictures and picture prompts (especially animals!) Describing words is generally a skill that students take to and teaching this part of speech is easier than others.

Grammar (especially parts of speech) can be SO exciting. It really gives the students a way to dive into and break apart sentences while seeing them for their whole and what they do for writing.

Let’s dig into teaching parts of speech- adjectives

How to teach Adjectives

Beginning with a foundation of nouns, verbs, and adjectives is important as they are the root of sentences. Once the subject and predicate are determined adjectives are the next flavor of the recipe to be added.

Cooking up Parts of Speech is a great analogy as all of these together make up great writing and vary from person to person.

Pictures (animals or other!) and great to begin learning about adjectives as you can describe what you see. Easy to do for students and lends itself to writing. Writing about themselves is also a great exercise and can be easy for them to see and relate.

How to make an Adjective Bulletin Board

Using animal pictures – create a zoo that students describe what they see. This would be a great adjective activity for grade 1 or grade 2.

If you are looking at more advanced grades (3rd and up) then filling in the short animal poems is a fun exercise that makes a silly adjective bulletin board that is eye catching.

Students also build up parts of speech skills that are great for beginning fill in puzzles like Mad Libs – which make an EXCELLENT part of speech center for your time if you have it available.

What’s the best Middle Grades Adjective Center?

Animal prompts + fun short poems (laminated) = reusable adjective worksheets for middle grades!

“With just a suitable push, in you go. Don’t want a dirty elephant, don’t ya know?”

Another great tool I love to use to teach adjectives in elementary is the Random Adjective Generator. While not all will be at the elementary level it is great to help brainstorm or do together as a class.