Adjectives Teaching Resources
Explain adjectives to your primary students with printable worksheets, digital activities, parts of speech games and more from the teachers of Teach Starter.
This collection of teaching resources is aligned to the Australian Curriculum and was teacher-created to help you help your students learn how to correctly identify and use this fundamental part of speech to make their writing more interesting and engaging. With editable resources, you'll be able to differentiate instruction for the individual students in your classroom easily.
New to teaching this part of the English curriculum or just looking for new ways to engage students as they learn about adjectives? Take a peek at this primer from our teacher team!
What Is an Adjective?
We know it's a bit obvious, but knowing the definition of this part of speech is only part of the battle. You'll also need to explain adjectives to your students!
Try the definition of this adjective for kids in your classroom:
An adjective is a word that describes a noun or pronoun. For example, in the sentence 'The fluffy dog barked,' 'fluffy' is an adjective because it describes the noun 'dog.' Adjectives can tell us what colour, size, shape, or feeling something is. They help us make our writing more interesting and descriptive.
Explain adjectives to your elementary students with printable worksheets, digital activities, adjective lists, describing word games and more from the teachers of Teach Starter.
This collection of teaching resources was teacher-created to help you help your students learn how to correctly identify and use this fundamental part of speech to make their writing more interesting and engaging. With editable curriculum-aligned resources, you'll be able to meet Common Core and state standards while also differentiating instruction for the individual students in your classroom.
Adjective Examples
Looking for some fun adjective examples to encourage your students to use more describing words in their writing?
This teaching resource collection is stocked with adjective lists and posters to inspire them, and here are a few to get them started!
- Colourful
- Loud
- Happy
- Enormous
- Tiny
- Fast
- Slow
- Spiky
- Soft
- Hard
- Bumpy
- Smooth
- Shiny
- Dull
- Silly
- Scary
- Beautiful
- Gigantic
- Freezing
- Hot
Why not start a list during a class brainstorm, and challenge your student to create their own describing words to add? You can create an entire adjective word wall to inspire descriptive writing!
Types of Adjectives
As their understanding of this part of speech progresses, students should learn about different types of adjectives, such as:
- Descriptive Adjectives — Just as their name implies, these words describe or modify nouns or pronouns. They provide more information about the characteristics, qualities or features of the noun or pronoun they modify. In the sentence 'The red car is fast,' for example, the word 'red' is a descriptive adjective that describes the colour of the car.
- Possessive Adjectives — Possessive adjectives show ownership or possession of a noun or pronoun. They tell the reader who or what owns or possesses something. Examples of possessive adjectives include
- my
- your
- his
- her
- its
- our
- their
- Ordinal Adjectives —Ordinal adjectives indicate the order or the position of something in a series or sequence. They can also describe the rank or position of something relative to other items. Ordinal numbers are an example of ordinal adjectives — words like 'first,' 'second,' 'third,' 'fourth,' and so on.
What Are Comparative and Superlative Adjectives?
If you're teaching students to compare and contrast items in maths class, they'll be working with two more types of adjectives.
Comparative and superlative adjectives are words we use to compare two or more things. These adjectives indicate the degree of a quality or characteristic of the noun or pronoun they modify.
Let's break it down a little bit more, shall we?
Comparative Adjectives
When you want to compare two things in writing, a comparative adjective can help the reader understand that one thing has more or less of a quality than the other.
For example, the adjective 'big' becomes 'bigger' when it becomes a comparative adjective.
Superlative Adjectives
Superlative adjectives are similar to comparative, but this type of adjective is used to compare three or more things.
Superlative adjectives tell a reader that one thing has the most or the least of a quality or characteristic when compared to all the others.
For example, if you have the adjective 'big,' you would make it superlative by adding '-gest' to form the word 'biggest.'
Here are some common examples of comparative and superlative adjectives:
- Tall (positive), taller (comparative), tallest (superlative)
- Fast (positive), faster (comparative), fastest (superlative)
- Happy (positive), happier (comparative), happiest (superlative)
- Smart (positive), smarter (comparative), smartest (superlative)
- Beautiful (positive), more beautiful (comparative), most beautiful (superlative)
How to Teach Adjectives to Kids — Fun Activities
When introducing adjectives to students, you'll want to focus on adjectives as words that describe or modify nouns or pronouns. Students should learn how to identify adjectives in sentences and how to use them to make their writing more descriptive.
Primary school is also when students learn about adjective order, which is the order in which adjectives should appear in a sentence.
You can explore this complete collection to find writing prompts to practise using adjectives, adjective games, parts of speech posters for the classroom and more resources to save you time on lesson planning.
To inspire you, here are a few fun adjective activities from our teacher team:
- Describe-A-Pet — Ask students to bring pictures of their family pets (or ask parents to email them). Use the pet photos to inspire a describing task. Students can work independently or in pairs to write descriptions of the pet in the picture assigned to them, using as many descriptive adjectives as possible.
- I Spy Adjectives — Add an adjective twist to 'I Spy' using adjectives beyond colour to describe items you 'spy' in the classroom. Students can work in pairs or small groups to write down as many items as they can guess from the adjectives you use. The team that got the most right wins!
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Year 3 and Year 4 English Worksheets - Christmas Printables
Add some Christmas spirit to your December grammar lessons with a printable pack of Christmas-themed Year 3 and Year 4 English worksheets.
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Glorious Grammar Volume 1 - Worksheet Book
50 activities in one booklet which all revolve around learning grammar in the classroom.
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Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives Cut and Paste Worksheet
Have some fun identifying parts of speech by sorting school-themed nouns, verbs, and adjectives with a cut-and-paste worksheet.
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Glorious Grammar (Early Years) Volume 1 – Worksheet Book
A workbook packed with 50 grammar activities for younger years.
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Nouns, Proper Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs and Conjunctions Posters
Enhance student understanding of the 8 parts of speech with these colourful, informative and easily-referenced grammar wall posters.
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Christmas Printables - Parts of Speech Cut and Paste Activities
Bring a bit of Christmas fun into your parts of speech lessons with printable Christmas worksheets
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Colour by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs - Frog
Consolidate your parts of speech lesson by colouring nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs on the frog.
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Adjectives and Adverbs Worksheets (Silly Stories)
Have fun with your students creating silly stories together while teaching and learning about parts of speech (adverbs and adjectives)!
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Adjectives List for Kids
Print your students a list of adjectives to keep at hand when writing to help them use descriptive language.
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Colour by Parts of Speech Chameleon Worksheet (Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Conjunctions and Pronouns)
Practise your parts of speech lesson by colouring nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and pronouns on the chameleon.
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Parts of Speech Colouring Worksheet (Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs)
Use this colour by part of speech worksheet as a fun Autumn activity with your students.
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Parts of Speech Word Search (Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs and Adverbs) – Worksheet
A word search where students find and categorise nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.
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Colour by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs & Adjectives - Seal
Review parts of speech by colouring nouns, verbs and adjectives on the seal.
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Colour by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs & Adjectives - Octopus
Practise using parts of speech by colouring nouns, verbs and adjectives on the octopus.
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Parts of Speech Word Cards Sorting Activity
Engage your students with this parts of speech group activity where they sort 112 word cards into categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, coordinating conjunctions or prepositions).
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Adverbs and Adjectives Interactive Activity
Share this interactive drag-and-drop activity with your students to allow them to practise the correct use of adverbs and adjectives in the English language.
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Adjectives Poster Pack
A set of 13 colourful posters with a variety of adjectives and illustrations to match.
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Grammar TVs
Grammar presented on TVs.
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Parts of Speech - Colour by Code Mystery Picture Worksheet
Follow the colour-coded parts of speech guide to fill in the word grid and reveal a mystery image.
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Adjectives Interactive Activity
Provide your students with engaging, interactive activities to help them improve their usage of descriptive adjectives.
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Character Adjective Concertina Template – The Gingerbread Man
Learn how adjectives can be used to describe a character's appearance and personality with a hands-on craft activity aligned to the English curriculum.
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Comical Chronicle Worksheets - Year 6
A set of 9 ad-lib style stories for students to complete.
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Colour by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Pronouns, Prepositions and Adverbs - Toucan
Consolidate your parts of speech lesson by colouring nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions and adverbs on the toucan.
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Describing Materials Template
A template to use when describing objects using the senses of touch and sight.
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My Drawing of the Gingerbread Man Worksheet
An engaging worksheet in the theme of the Gingerbread Man that explores the use of adjectives through drawing.
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Character Adjective Concertina Template – Blank
Learn how adjectives can be used to describe a character's appearance and personality with a hands-on craft activity aligned to the English curriculum.
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Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives – Four Corners Game
Identify common and proper nouns, verbs and adjectives through this elimination-style types of words active game.
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Parts of Speech Card Game – Editable
An editable parts of speech card game.
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Dinosaur Adjectives Worksheet
A set of 6 dinosaur themed adjective teaching resource worksheets.
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Adjective and Adverb Scoot Game
Scoot! This fun active learning game will have your students up and about on an adverb and adjective adventure around your classroom!
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Adjective or Adverb? Task Cards
Use this set of 24 task cards to help students understand where an adverb or an adjective is the correct modifier in a sentence.
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Adjectives and the Senses – Worksheet
A sorting worksheet where students organise adjectives into the most appropriate sense.