Adjectives

What does an adjective describe? An adjective describes a noun or pronoun! What is a noun? A noun is a person, place, or thing. What is a pronoun? A word that takes the place of the noun.

What are some helpful clues for finding adjectives? An adjective usually answers the following questions about the noun it describes: ▫What kind? ▫Which one? ▫How many? It is helpful to find the nouns in a sentence before trying to figure out what the adjectives are.

Practice First find the nouns. Then ask, “What words describe the nouns?” ▫What kind?  Ex.) Madison decided to buy a pink, glittery dress for the school dance. ▫Which one?  Ex.) Eric chose to bring his green and white frisbees to Fantastic Friday last week. ▫How many?  Daniel ran ten laps around the soccer field before practice.

Common vs. Proper Adjectives What is a common adjective? ▫It is an adjective that is not proper, meaning it does not have a proper noun as one of the words. ▫Ex.) baseball bat, massive volcano What is a proper adjective? ▫A proper noun used as an adjective or an adjective formed from a proper noun. ▫ALWAYS capitalized ▫Ex.) Easton bat, Hawaiian volcano

Practice Use your True/False cards to answer. Lutetia, the asteroid that came close to the Earth last week, is about one hundred kilometers across! True or False: The word “last” is an adjective.

TRUE!! “last” describes the noun “week”

Practice Use your True/False cards to answer. This asteroid is traveling at a rate of 29,000 miles per hour. True or False: “Rate” is an adjective.

FALSE!! “rate” is a noun

Practice Use your True/False cards to answer. NASA hopes that they can find out more about future asteroids for the American people. True or False: “American” is a common adjective.

FALSE!! “American” is a proper adjective because it comes from the proper noun “America”.

Now that we have learned about adjectives, let’s head back to the classroom to see how adjectives can completely alter an ordinary object!