A Game You Can Play Using Different Kinds of Nouns

Fill-in-the-Blank Method

It was made popular in the 1980s through a series of books called Mad-Libs. On each page was a fill-in-the-blank story with some of the nouns, verbs and adjectives removed. The writer would call out the type of word needed and the player or players would, not having seen the story, suggest words to be put in the blanks. You can create one of these games by taking a story or portion of a book that the students may or may not be familiar with, eliminating each type of noun in the text. The resulting story, with the student filled-in suggestions will often be hilarious when read aloud.

The age of your students will play a big role in choosing the type of story or portion of a book to use. You may even choose to use a scene in a popular movie and rewrite it using the fill-in-the-blank method. Younger students should be familiar with the common and proper nouns as well as with the pronouns. Concrete, compound and abstract nouns should be used for fifth graders on up.

After the story or stories are read and the class has had a good laugh, write the words the students suggested on the board and ask them to change the proper nouns to common nouns and concrete nouns to abstract or collective nouns. For example, if a student suggested “America” for a proper noun, a common noun that could be used instead would be “Country”. The pronoun, “Her” is used occasionally to refer to America as well. When referring to the ideals that built and formed this country, “America” may also represent an abstract noun. Test each suggested noun in the same way. If the students can look at the same noun in different ways and are able to articulate the reasons why each noun can be used in different ways, they will have a reasonably good grasp of the concept of nouns.

Write the three-fold description of a noun on the board, “a person, place or thing.” List each suggested noun under one of these three categories. Ask the students to determine how many different types of nouns can refer to each of those they chose. For example, America is a place, but an American is a person.