Adjectives

What is this skill?

An adjective is a describing word. It tells what something is like: soft, tiny, cold, shiny, brave. Second graders learn to find adjectives in a sentence and to pick one that fits. In "The fluffy dog barked," fluffy describes the dog. In "Amara ate the hot soup," hot describes the soup.

The practice starts with single words, such as picking the describing word from soft, run and table, or the word that tells about size (tiny). Then it moves to sentences: which word describes the dog, which word tells how the kitten feels in "The sleepy kitten yawned," and which describing word fits in "The ___ ice cream melted." Sorting games separate describing words from other words (big, red, jump, cat), and the hardest one includes gentle, hungry, enormous, whisper, kitchen and dance. Some of the hardest choice questions ask which sentence has two adjectives (The big red ball rolled) and which word is NOT an adjective (carried, shiny, bumpy or loud).

Why it matters

Adjectives are the quickest way to make writing come alive. "The dog barked" becomes a picture with "The fluffy dog barked." A child who knows what an adjective is can go back to a flat sentence and ask what it is like. That is a skill teachers ask for in every grade after this one.

Knowing the word also separates describing words from the other kinds. Second graders now have nouns, verbs and adjectives to work with, and a sentence with all three is a full, interesting sentence.

Common mistakes

• Picking the noun that is being described instead of the describing word. In "The fluffy dog barked," dog is easy to see, but the question asks about the word that tells what it is like.
• Calling an adverb an adjective. A word like quickly, which tells how something is done, is not an adjective, and it shows up as a tricky choice (green, jump or quickly). Ask whether the word describes a thing or an action.
• Treating a describing word as a verb because it is about feelings. Sleepy and brave describe someone, so they are adjectives, while sleep and jump are verbs.
• Calling a verb in the past tense an adjective, such as carried. Ask, "Can it describe a noun, or does it tell what someone did?"

How to help at home

• Play "describe it." Hold up a spoon, a sock or a stuffed animal and take turns naming describing words: shiny, soft, small.
• Take a short sentence, like "We ate lunch," and add one describing word at a time until it is silly.
• At dinner, ask for three describing words about the food. Notice which senses you used.
• When reading together, stop on a page and ask, "Which word tells what it looked like?"

Worked examples

These are real questions from the Tutorsaurus adjectives practice, with the answers worked out.

1. Example 1

   Is this a describing word?

   happy

   Answer: Adjective. Happy describes how someone feels. It is an adjective.

2. Example 2

   Which word describes the soup?

   Amara ate the hot soup.

   Choices: Amara, ate, hot

   Answer: hot. Hot describes the soup. Amara is a noun and ate is a verb.

3. Example 3

   Which word is NOT an adjective?

   Choices: carried, shiny, bumpy, loud

   Answer: carried. Carried is not an adjective. It is a verb. Bumpy, shiny, and loud all describe things.

Printable worksheet (PDF) — one page of questions from this practice that work on paper, easier ones first, with an answer key on page 2. Free to print, no sign-up.