Ordering Adjectives... Who knew?

Which sentence is ordered correctly?
A.  We climbed into Dad's red, rusty, old pickup truck.
B.  We climbed into Dad's old, red, rusty pickup truck.
C.  We climbed into Dad's rusty, old, red pickup truck.

C is ordered correctly. It's obvious, right? To those of us who are native English speakers, it's the only one that "sounds" right. To my ear, A and B just sound awkward and clunky.

I must confess, that's how I went about figuring out the order of adjectives for the first 30-some years of my life. I went with what sounded right.

Then, I met up with the Common Core State Standards...  CCSS ELA-Literacy.L.4.1.D to be precise. Order adjectives within sentences according to convention patterns (e.g., a small red bag rather than a red small bag). Yep, it turns out that there are "rules" when it comes to ordering adjectives. 

A few weeks ago, a friend emailed me and asked me if I would be willing to create some resources to match this fourth grade standard. I jumped at the opportunity. As an ESL teacher of 14 years, I believe this is an important language standard.  It struck me that I had been able to get along just fine for decades without knowing any specific "rules" regarding the placement of adjectives within sentences by just figuring out which option "sounded right". The ELLs in our classrooms, however, often aren't quite as lucky. Most of them simply do not have the advantage of being able to determine which option sounds "right", and which option sounds "clunky".

I set out to create a handful of engaging, student-friendly materials to address this standard.   As you can see, most of the materials I created are related to the idea of "sliding adjectives into sentences" in the correct order. Just click on the image if you want to take a closer look!

Clearly, I have no recollection at all of learning this when I was younger. I'm curious... do you remember learning how to correctly insert adjectives into sentences when you were younger?

~Deb

1 comment 4th grade, Adjectives, Anchor Chart, ELA

Adjectives Anchor Chart

My anchor chart today focuses on adjectives. This all came about as a result of a conversation that took place around our family dinner table last Tuesday evening.  It went like this:

Kayla (my fourth grader):  We are learning about adjectives in school this week.

Me:  So tell me what an adjective is.

Kayla:  (long pause)  A person, place or thing???

Brooke (my second grader):  No, that's a noun.  And I know that a verb is an action word.

Me:  Kayla, you learned about adjectives way back in second grade.  You remember what they are, don't you?

Kayla:  Hmmm... I can't remember...adjectives are hard!

Me:  An adjective is a describing word, it describes a noun...

Parts of speech.. so difficult for so many kids! As a teacher who has worked with all elementary grade levels, I know that most kids have trouble retaining what they learn about parts of speech. Fourth and fifth grade teachers, don't you find that you always have to start over and review (a lot) all parts of speech before you can get to the new ones introduced at your grade level?? I can tell you that there was a point when Kayla was in second grade and in third grade when she could tell you exactly what an adjective was, and identify an adjective in a sentence! But... time passed and she obviously forgot what she learned!

So... I spent a lot of time thinking about this issue this week, trying to think of a clever connection that would help students recall what an adjective does in a sentence.  Here's what I came up with:

Clip art by Educasong.

When I teach this lesson in a classroom, I plan to create the above anchor chart prior to the beginning of class.  I will tape it to the board, and then tape up the bottom so that only the question is displayed at the beginning of the lesson.  I think it would be interesting to have students answer this question themselves. They may come up with some connections that I hadn't considered!

After a brief brainstorming session, I would remove the tape from the anchor chart and reveal the rest of the information, and discuss the connection that I came up with.

Then, I would have students help me find the adjectives and the nouns/pronouns they are attracted to in the example sentences on the chart.  

Now is a time when I wish I had a classroom so that I could teach this lesson and find out if the connection will be meaningful for students, and help them with long-term retention. What do you think? Will the mental connection of an adjective being comparable to a magnet work? If any of you try this approach with your students, please let me know how it goes!  

In fact, I created a matching craftivity!  If you don't want to recreate the anchor chart, you can use the teaching poster that I created for the craftivity file.

Students complete the above worksheet (the file includes another worksheet page, too), and then use their answers to assemble the craftivity.

Thanks for dropping by today!

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5 comments Adjectives, Anchor Chart, Craftivities, parts of speech