If you ever had even one classroom lesson on diagramming sentences, then you probably feel the sudden urge to run – - far, far away – - when you hear the phrase “parts of speech”.  But the truth is that understanding the parts of speech and how they fit together makes writing and reading make sense.

Words are classified as belonging to any of eight parts of speech: verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. Each part of speech tells not what the word is, but how the word is used in a particular sentence or context. In fact, the same word can be a noun in one sentence and a verb or adjective in the next. The word “well” is a perfect example: I don’t feel well today (adverb) / Well! isn’t that something? (interjection) / The well is dry (noun) / His next well visit is with Dr. Smith (adjective).

Parts of speech are introduced early in a child’s education, starting with the main building blocks of a sentence and adding more parts as the grade level progresses. For example, the primary grades are taught the general parts of speech thematically, such as Dolch words parts of speech and some science parts of speech. Kids in grades 3-5 learn more specific material, such as distinguishing between various forms of noun parts of speech as well as adjective synonyms and adjective antonym parts of speech. At the middle school level, it becomes particularly important for kids to determine the parts of speech of FCAT words correctly just as high school students must be familiar with the parts of speech of SAT words.

But just because the parts of speech are a necessary grammar skill doesn’t mean they have to be boring or dry!  On the contrary, Vocabulary.co.il has created some terrific games to make this process an enjoyable and interactive one.  Check out these great grade-specific parts of speech games.