partsofspeech

Teaching Page
Working the Puzzle called Parts of Speech

	Introduction The Puzzle of Parts of Speech is a two week communication skills and English middle school Internet project. This project has been designed for a sixth grade English class, but it can be adapted and used as a project in any upper elementary, middle school, or high school class. The flexibility of this project should allow teachers to focus on certain issues. This can shorten or lengthen the scope and sequence of the lesson(s). This is a fun and motivating process to teach and review parts of speech with your students. This project invites you and your students to sift through stories, scan pages, and browse newspaper articles as you examine parts of speech. You are offered an opportunity to understand how parts of speech fit together to form sentences which then form great stores. Together, teacher and students, will work together to arm themselves with a talent for identifying and using different parts of speech to strengthen thinking skills and communication skills.
	Objectives Upon completion, this WebQuest will enable students to: Analyze, review, and practice parts of speech Use technology to motivate, inspire, and practice the parts of speech Articulate how parts of speech fit together to form good sentences that in turn make great paragraphs and stories. Relate what has been learned to its importance of daily speech Develop an awareness of parts of speech in writing and speaking Students will create their own madlib that they will share with others in the class. The best of those will be posted on the web.
	Content Areas and Grades
	This unit is designed as an English project for upper elementary, middle school, and high school classes. It could be a three to five week unit that focuses on isolated skills (such as identification of certain parts of speech) or it could evolve into an extended, online, collaborative project that culminates in an original, creative online web page posting of students' stores and their labeling of parts of speech. This project could take three months to complete. It depends upon the depth of subject(s) that a teacher wants to cover.
	Curriculum Standards
	This project doesn't just teach a block of content; it teaches important "thinking" skills. In addition to describing learning outcomes within English class, this project promotes inference-making, critical thinking, creative production, creative problem-solving, observation and categorization, comparison, teamwork, compromise, and it teaches independent thinking. Sixth to eighth grade reading and writing standards can be drawn from the Tennessee Curriculum Framework. The goal of this WebQuest was to provide a project by which students would develop skills necessary to produce excellent written language. Writing is a life-long interactive process that is used to communicate with a variety of audiences and for a variety of purposes, adapting language conventions appropriately according to context. Writing is an act of discovery, a means of personal growth, and a tool for clarifying knowledge. To accomplish writing tasks more effectively, students need exposure to a variety of strategies, such as those included in the stages of the writing process in order to approach writing systematically. To improve writing, one needs an understanding of the concept of parts of speech as the puzzle pieces to a sentence.
	Resources Needed
	What is needed to implement this lesson? You will need to read this entire project very carefully and gather all the resources for your classroom. Become comfortable and familiar with the teaching materials before you initiate this project. I have used a safe, free, and fun student email to create a more motivational and learning student experience. This is a new way to review those parts of speech that students find boring sometimes. It also will enable the teacher to be in direct contact with students when needed. I have found email to be a great one-on-one way to faciliatate classroom projects. Elements for success: Student centered teaching environment Adequate time spent teaching students about writing, reading, and parts of speech Additional materials for students to support the project Student choice and accountability Access to computers Adequate collaborative planning time with the school librarian Time for students to complete tasks Computer access for students and teachers Student, teacher, parent, administration, and librarian communication Secured safe email addresses
	Entry Level Skills and Knowledge
	What research and multimedia design skills do you and your students bring to this project? A basic understanding of Internet research, and reasonable facility with multimedias tools are needed. With this project you can teach students to: Search the Internet for needed information Compare and contrast ideas Read carefully for detail Produce an evaluative learning product in multimedia or online Articulate how parts of speech will be beneficial, meaningful, and useful throughout life as students talk and write throughout their lives. Build a web page for the purpose of displaying student work Students can email, forwarding, attaching, and replying. (I teach this early in the year so that my students can do projects throughout the year.) Other Prerequisite Learning: paragraph writing experience, writing simple sentences, knowledge of web page navigation, knowledge of e-mail and WWW, some basic research knowledge
	Implementation Overview
	This quest challenges students to investigate the parts of speech. It allows for strengthening technology skills, exercising creativity, practicing research skills. Students will practice parts of speech and finally produce a story that demonstrates their understanding of the concepts of parts of speech. Students will demonstrate their grasp of the concepts by articulating a story with certain parts of speech. You will need to: Devise a learning standard. What do you expect your students to know and be able to do at the end of the project? Create an assessment rubric for students based on your expectations or use this suggested one. Decide on the learning product. It could be a web page, a multimedia presentation, a video, or a portfolio of examples of parts of speech. Whatever format the product may take, students will present and defend their newfound learning of parts of speech.
	Suggestions for Implementation
	You can spend a week, a month, or work on this unit throughout the year. Use this project to inspire your students to practice, to encourage independent work, and to instill an apprectiation for communication skills in the student. This unit could be designed to accompany a thematic unit on American literature, poetry, or just as an end of the year review. We suggest that you begin by showing examples to your students. Visit several of the suggested lesson plans and ideas in order to adapt this WebQuest to your classroom. (Don't forget to click the back button to return to this WebQuest.) Some suggested specific lesson plans for this unit: http://web.infoave.net/~tnorris/toc.html This link has links to all the various parts of speech. Writing Wacky Web Tales This is a great place to review parts of speech and writing great stories! http://www.cs.arizona.edu/~collberg/Research/writing.html Writing resources for parts of speech and punctuation Parts of speech song (Maybe students could write one?) http://www.knownet.net/users/Ackley/parts_speech_song.html A specific lesson plan for reviewing parts of speech with the group http://www.niu.edu/acad/english/wac/lesson1f.html Here are some lesson plans to complete this unit on review of parts of speech. Lesson Plans for Parts of Speech Review Other Resources for the teacher Grammar Quizzes for checkups Writing Links Grammar Ideas and Lessons The Parts of Speech Song Lyrics Book Resources
	You and your students will also use and discuss the assessment rubric for your class project.

Teaching Page | Student Page | Resources | Main Page

Content Areas and Grades

Curriculum Standards

Resources Needed

Entry Level Skills and Knowledge

Implementation Overview

Suggestions for Implementation