2,964.
This is the number that reflects the grading I have been doing for the past five days in between sports events with my sons, lesson plans for school, teaching, eating, sleeping, talking to my wife, petting the dog and doing all of the things that people do when not working.
2,964 is the number of Parts of Speech words I have been looking at through my teaching lens, examining and, in some cases, explaining in writing why “to” is a verb in that case and not a preposition. I have 78 students, who each had to color code Parts of Speech words in a project (identifying words in their own writing). There were 38 Parts of Speech that had to be identified for each student.
Here’s the break down of the words I read:
- 790 nouns
- 790 verbs
- 395 adjectives
- 395 adverbs
- 234 prepositions
- 234 pronouns
- 78 conjunctions
- 78 interjections
And overall? They did great. I am very impressed by the effort and hard work that went into this project. I’ve written before about how odd it is to have kids pick apart writing to get to the word level, but I was most impressed by the writing itself. They had to write a narrative about themselves to use as text for color coding. It’s nice to see how far so many have come from where they were as writers at the start of the year.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was sick of Parts of Speech right now. (so are my students).
Peace (that’s a noun, right?),
Kevin
I think it is really important to understand parts of speech and how they relate to each other as long as kids don’t get hung up on parts of speech when they write. The color coding sounds like a fun way to look at it as does the tallying up.
Part of Speech- learning them in school- still turns my blood to ice- diagramming sentences was the way a writer learned to write- I know that’s not happening in Mr. Hodgson’s class 🙂
Bonnie
Kevin,
Your photo looks intriguing and makes me curious about how you and your class went about this lesson. Your class certainly did lots of work. Here’s to new learning!
The projects look great; your students must have learned a bunch. Parts of speech can be challenging for some students; I like that you had them write something personal to work the lesson with. They surely were much more motivated than with just a piece of text you gave them. Thanks for sharing.
I loved your sign off. Such a great story and well-written. It is amazing to watch our cherubs grow and stretch themselves throughout the year. To look back on how far they have come and imagine that it might have some tiny bit to do with us.
Wow. Amazing. Empressed. Thanks for the picture. It gives me a visual of your hard work and your students. It’s great to know that your students are growing. I wish my son was in your class. Thank you for your dedication the small parts and the whole.