Is it a noun or a verb? Dice game - words that can be used as nouns and verbs

Excellent grammar session! Fully differentiated! Including ‘support’ and ‘going deeper’ activities and a detailed PowerPoint to use in class. Available as word and PDF docs.

Assessment focus
I can identify nouns and verbs
When I classify (group) a word, I think about the job it is doing in the sentence

Explanation
We spend a lot of time telling children that nouns are ‘people, places, things and ideas’ and verbs are ‘actions or states of being’. These are useful starting points for younger learners, but there is a little more it…

If you ask children to classify ‘walk’, ‘laugh’, ‘object’ and ‘book’, they will likely tell you that the first two are verbs and the second two are nouns. Understandable! In fact, these words can be nouns or verbs, and there are many similar examples. Therefore, when children are classifying a word, we need to encourage them to look at the function of the word within its sentence.

The walk was long and tiring. (Noun)
I walk to school. (Verb)

This two player dice game, aimed at upper KS2, gives pupils lots of opportunities to identify nouns and verbs. More than that, they also explore the function of words that can be used as nouns and verbs. Children have to look at the whole sentence before classifying a word. It has built in peer assessment, so there is NO MARKING REQUIRED! Pupils assess each other’s answers as the game progresses: player A has player B’s answers and vice versa. Lots of opportunities for pupil talk!

It’s an engaging way to get pupils talking about the function of words and is much richer than a simple worksheet.