Procedure

Teachers -- tell the students: a fun activity might be to have the students look around their classroom, and write down everything they see. Have each student read one or more of their items out loud - most of these will be nouns. Next, have the students organize these nouns into categories of "people, places, or things."
(Ex. desk, chair, teacher, Sam, pencil, book, chalkboard, floor...)

Proper Nouns

Proper nouns are nouns that name a certain place, like New York City, or a certain person, like Abraham Lincoln. Proper nouns begin with a capital letter.

Examples of Proper Nouns:

Main Street
Dr. John Smith
Phoenix, Arizona
Spot
United States
East Elementary

Pronouns

Pronouns are words that can take the place of nouns. When talking about yourself, you would say "me" or "I" instead of your own name.

Examples of pronouns:

I
she
me
it
he
they

Wrong: Heidi called Kyle to ask Kyle if Kyle could meet Heidi at the park. (This sentence doesn't make sense - no pronouns.)

Correct: Heidi called Kyle to ask him if he could meet her at the park. (Substitutes the pronouns him and he for Kyle, and her for Heidi.)

Singular and Plural Nouns

Singular nouns are nouns that name one person, one place or one thing.

Example:

cup
dog
toy

Plural nouns are nouns that name more than one person, place, or thing.

Example:

cups
dogs
toys

To change most nouns from singular to plural, add the letter s. But for nouns that end in s, ss, ch, sh, or x, add -es to show more than one.

Singular
bus
dish
box
bench

Plural
buses
dishes
boxes
benches

Some plural nouns have to be spelled in a new way:

Singular
goose
child
man
person

Plural
geese
children
men
people

Teachers: Write these example sentences on the board. Then have students try to identify the nouns, as well as tell what type of noun it is.

Example 1
Bill and Bob drove their car to Chicago. They were tired.
(Bill, Bob, Chicago - singular, proper nouns. They - pronoun)

Example 2
Disneyland, in California, is her favorite place to visit.
(Disneyland, California = singular, proper nouns.)

Example 3
She lives near the Atlantic Ocean.
(She = singular, pronoun. Atlantic Ocean = proper noun.)

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