What Is an Adjective?

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

• What words did you choose?

Maybe you used words like excited, colorful, sunny, or happy.

• What part of speech are these words called?

Excited, colorful, sunny, and happy are all adjectives.

• What is an adjective?

As you watch the fun song below, listen for the word modify and try to figure out what it means.

Adjectives Song, Adjective Song (Adjectives by Melissa) | Award Winning Educational Song Video from GrammarSongs by Melissa:

We use descriptive adjectives to modify nouns, which means to change or better explain them.

For example, take a look at this sentence about the picture above:

The girl and brother ran along the beach with a kite.

• How could we modify the italicized nouns with descriptive adjectives?

The happy girl and her excited brother ran along the sunny beach with a colorful kite.

Descriptive adjectives, like happy and colorful, describe nouns or pronouns, like girl and kite.

For a list of more words that you can use to modify nouns, check out the Amazing Adjectives found under the Downloadable Resources in the right-hand sidebar.

Next, read this sentence and picture what it is describing in your mind:

The road led home.

The word road is a noun. Try rewriting this sentence using descriptive adjectives to modify, or describe the noun.

You can use the Amazing Adjectives list to help you! Think about words that describe the color, shape, and size of the noun.

You may consider the following words to describe road: long, strange, wide, broad, familiar, winding.

Here is an example of a sentence with more than one descriptive adjective for road:

The dark, winding road led home.

Dark and winding modify the noun road.

Using adjectives in your writing helps the reader to create a mental picture.

• Did the picture of the road change between the first example and the example including the descriptive adjectives?

Create a chart like the one below on a piece of paper. Then, write down a noun that the listed adjective could describe. There are many possible answers, so be creative!

When your chart is finished, keep going in the Got It? section!