. This exercise brings that vocabulary together into coherent and ordered meaning that visually mimics language and text. Later on, as your students move from speech to text recognition, and then to decoding language in connected text, it will be helpful to remind them of this simple exercise and the songs they used to sing when little. Let the kids make their own sentences or dictate sentences for an excellent listening exercise. Always ask the students to ‘read’ their sentences and help students who don’t yet understand that the correct order is important.
Upping the Ante
Once students are confident with ordering simple adjectives, start throwing numbers into the mix. By necessity, you’ll also be putting an emphasis on the ‘s’ sounds of plurals that they’re likely already using in songs and regular verbal exercises, like “Five Little Monkeys?” and “I’m four years old.” For more on this topic, be sure to check out my post on teaching plurals to ESL students!
Now that you’ve introduced these concepts to your kids, keep a board or table available with cards so that students can make sentences on their own. You may be surprised at what they put together! It also pays to have a bit of sympathy and patience. Trying to consciously LEARN this order must be terrible! I’m glad I have no memory of it – a sort of potty training of the brain. If you introduce this concept early on, it’s going to be easier as their studies become more sophisticated.
If you’re teaching older students, download a stacked adjective worksheet page from Stories For Young Readers, Book 2, a full textbook available on David Paul’s ETJ Book Service or the Kinney Brothers Publishing web site. The worksheet is very helpful when learning to do the Adjective Conga and includes an answer key. Again, color, number, and more flashcards are available from my Teachers-Pay-Teachers store. Please feel free to visit and download!
To learn more about early reading skills, check out my previous posts Sight Words: What, When, and How and Teaching CVC Words. You might also be interested to learn about the most common adjectives, why Big Bad Wolf follows a different adjectival order, or test your knowledge of stacked adjectives.
Good luck and enjoy!
*OK, you grammar mavens – let’s keep it simple. I understand that ‘a’ is a special kind of adjective called an indefinite article that refers to a singular noun whose specific identity is not known to the listener or reader. Unfortunately, at their age, my kids aren’t going to get that as an explanation – nor should they be expected to. I also use numbers instead of written words in sentences until they learn to read the numbers as sight words. I’m aware that this is a grammatical infraction, but I pay little heed to academic imperatives when it comes to teaching my youngest English learners. Using easy-to-understand concepts (reduced though they may be) to teach young learners is not damaging anyone. If you are so inclined to always be aligned to Elements of Style, simply put the words on the front of all your cards and you’ll be covered.