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Topic: Noun

Nouns are a very important word class, and are often (but not always) words for people, places and things. They can be marked as plural or possessive.

Nouning verbs

A quick activity looking at how some words can be both nouns and verbs

This is a simple starter activity that will help your students see how some words can function as both nouns and verbs. The activity is designed to be carried out in pairs around the class. One student be the noun and the other will be the verb. Each will need the same word list (which you can download and print below) or you can just use the word list on the screen.

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01: Nouns

Year 2 Guided Grammar Lessons #1

This is Lesson #1 of a unit of 10.

Go to the Start

Teacher Slide

Objective: grammar

To understand that nouns are words that represent people, places and things, to understand how they are formed, and to understand what some of their grammatical characteristics are.

Please read the lesson plan in the Manual before delivering this lesson.

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Antonymy 1 (Stein)

Plan

Activity 1

Explain to learners that antonyms are pairs of words that mean the opposite of each other. This is very common with adjectives. Show the three examples; then ask learners to come up with three more pairs themselves. Check to make sure they are using adjectives. 

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Antonymy 1 (Stein)

Lesson

Objective

To understand the meaning of antonyms and how they are formed.

Activity 1

In the lesson on synonyms, we saw how words can have similar meanings. They can also be related through opposite meanings. This is very common with adjectives: 

  • long - short
  • old - new 
  • quick - slow 

We call these pairs of words antonyms. Can you think of three other pairs of antonyms? 

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Collective Nouns (Stein)

Plan

Activity 1

Ask learners to think of some nouns and make them singular and plural. Then, ask if they can think of any nouns which you cannot make plural. Show them the examples in the next slide and see if they can guess the words. 

Activity 2

Ask the learners to look at the table of collective nouns and organise them into two categories. Use the 'hint' button to help if your learners are stuck.

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Collective Nouns (Stein)

Lesson

Objective

To understand diffferent types of collective nouns.

Usually, nouns can be singular or plural, like book or books.

What other examples can you think of? 

There are some nouns which only appear in the singular. Can you think of any? 

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Derived nouns and composition

In this activity we will look at suffixes that can change adjectives and verbs into nouns.

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Derived nouns and composition: Activity 1

Complete the examples with nouns which are derived from the highlighted adjectives. The first answer is provided for you.

Anna was late. It annoyed me. → Anna's lateness annoyed me.

Jeff is shy. I didn’t notice this until the party. → I didn’t notice Jeff’s ___ until the party. I didn’t notice Jeff’s shyness until the party.

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Derived nouns and composition: Activity 2

Complete the examples with nouns which are derived from the highlighted adjectives. The first answer is provided.

The peacekeeping forces withdrew. It led to civil war. → The withdrawal of the peacekeeping forces led to civil war.

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Gender in Nouns (Stein)

Plan

Activity 1

Explain to the learners that nouns can refer to male or female people. In language, this difference is called gender. 

Ask learners to copy down the list and add the nouns of the oppsite gender. Show them the solutions and ask them what patterns they notice. Answer: some are completely different words while others use a suffix to change the meaning. 

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Gender in Nouns (Stein)

Lesson

Objective

To explore the meaning of gender in nouns.

Activity 1

What's the difference between the words mother and father?

Nouns for people can refer to a man or a male such as father or to a woman or female such as mother .

In language, we call this difference gender.

For each noun, write the word that expresses the opposite gender: 

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Genre of Argument and Discussion 2

Lesson Plan

Goals:

  • Identify and analsye how nominalisations are used in essays
  • Identify and analsye how the passiv voice is used in essays
  • Apply these features in a writing task

Lesson Plan

This is Part 2 of the lesson on Argument and Discussion. 

Make sure you have the handout from Part 1. 

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Genre of Argument and Discussion 2

Activities

This is Part 2 of the lesson on Argument and Discussion. 

Make sure you have the handout from Part 1. 

In the first lesson, you looked at how information is organised through discourse structure. In this lesson, you will examine choices of language and register.  

Activity 1

Re-read paragraph 3. Can you find an example of the same word being used in different grammatical roles?

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Genre of Encyclopaedia Entries

Lesson Plan

Goals:

  • Identify the purpose and tone of encyclopaedia entries
  • Analyse the discourse structure and register features
  • Produce an encyclopaedia entry using the same techniques

Lesson Plan

Before this lesson, you may want to complete the lesson An Introduction to Genre, so that learners are familiar with the key terms discourse structure and register

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Genre of Encyclopaedia Entries

Activities

Warm up

What kind of text is an encyclopaedia?

What is its purpose?

What makes it different from other texts?

Activity 1

Read the Tiger encyclopaedia entry.

  1. What are three facts you learn about tigers?
  2. How is this text written? What is the tone? Why is it written in this way?

What three words best describe the tone and style of this text?

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Genre of Recipes

Lesson Plan

Goals: 

  • Compare the discourse structure and register features of two recipes
  • Identify which grammatical features can be omitted for effect 
  • Analyse why recipes follow a predictable structure and set of features

Lesson Plan

Before this lesson, you may want to complete the lesson An Introduction to Genre, so that learners are familiar with the key terms discourse structure and register

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Genre of Recipes

Activities

Warmer 

Discuss with a partner: 

  • What's your favourite meal? 
  • What recipes can you cook? 
  • What kind of information do recipes normally include?

Activity 1 

In pairs or small groups, read recipes A and B. Take turns describing each recipe, and then discuss with your partner: 

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Homonyms (Stein)

Plan

Please note: there are two pages of activities for this lesson.

Activity 1

Show the learners the two example words. Ask them to discuss with a partner how many different meanings they can think of. In the next two slides, show possible solutions. 

Next, explain that words with multiple unrelated meanings are called homonyms. Ask learners to identify the word class of the two example words.  

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Homonyms 1 (Stein)

Lesson

Objective

To identify the different meanings of homonyms of various word classes. 

Activity 1

Look at these two words. How many meanings can you think of for each? 

  • bank 
  • pupil

  • bank 
    1. an organization or a building that handles money and provides financial services. 
    2. the land on the side of a river or a lake

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    Homonyms 2 (Stein)

    Lesson

    Activity 3

    This lesson continues our look at homonyms. 

    Take for example the word fast

    How many different meanings and word classes can you think of?

    Look at these two sentences: 

    1. Katie works very fast
    2. Katie is a fast worker.

    They have very similar meanings, but in one sentence fast is an adverb and in the other an adjective.

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    Hyponymy (Stein)

    Plan

    Activity 1

    Show the learners the list of three nouns. Ask them to discuss the questions in pairs or small groups. 

    After a couple of minutes, reveal the focus of the lesson in the next slide: how nouns can relate to each other by being more general or specific. Use the example to demonstrate. Ask learners if they can think of any other examples. Don't worry if they struggle at this point, as they will see more throughout the lesson. 

    Ask learners to make notes on the new terminology as they will need it for the other activities. 

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    Hyponymy (Stein)

    Lesson

    Activity 1

    Look at these three nouns.

    What is the relationship between them? Can they be arranged into a logical order? 

    • Dog
    • Poodle
    • Animal

    We can label nouns as general or specific. The specific noun is included in the general noun.

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    Metaphor (Stein)

    Plan

    Activity 1

    Check your learners' prior knowledge by asking them to discuss the meaning of the term metaphor and to give examples. This can be done individually, and then check in small groups and/or whole class.

    Use the next slide to confirm the learners' answers. Next, ask if the learners can think of any other animal metaphors such as sly fox. Ask learners to share their ideas with each other and the whole class.

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    Metaphor (Stein)

    Lesson

    Activity 1

    What does the term metaphor mean?

    Can you think of an example? 

    A metaphor is when a word or phrase is used to suggest a resemblance to a another thing or action. 

    A metaphor uses language in a figurative sense. 

    When we call someone a sly fox we are implying that their behaviour is similar to a fox i.e. sneaky or crafty. 

    What other animal metaphors can you think of? 

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