Adjectives Teaching Resources
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.
New to teaching this part of the English Language Arts 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? A Kid-Friendly Definition
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 color, size, shape, or feeling something is. They help us make our writing more interesting and descriptive.
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!
- Colorful
- 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 come up with their own describing words to add to the list? 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 are words used to describe or modify nouns or pronouns. They provide more information about the characteristics, qualities or features of the noun or pronoun they are modifying. In the sentence "The red car is fast," for example, the word "red" is a descriptive adjective that describes the color of the car.
- Possessive Adjectives — Possessive adjectives are used to 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
- Examples of possessive adjectives include:
- Ordinal Adjectives —Ordinal adjectives are used to 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 math 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 type of adjectives indicate the degree of a quality or characteristic of the noun or pronoun they are modifying.
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 first 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.
Elementary 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 center activities and writing prompts to practice using adjectives, as well as ELA 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 in pictures of their family pets (or ask parents to email them in). 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 color 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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Adjectives Worksheet
Practice identifying and writing adjectives in sentences with this 1-page worksheet.
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Color by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives - Seal
A fun activity to use when learning about nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
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Comical Chronicle Worksheets for 4th Grade
Practice different parts of speech with your 4th graders using this set of 10 ad-lib style stories.
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Comical Chronicle Worksheets for 2nd Graders
Practice different parts of speech with your 2nd graders using this set of 10 ad-lib style stories.
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Color Adjectives - Worksheet
A worksheet activity designed to help prompt students to be more descriptive when describing nouns with colors.
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Label These Sentences! – Worksheet
A worksheet that requires students to label the parts of speech in sentences.
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Adjectives and the Senses – Worksheet
Organize adjectives into the most appropriate sense with this cut and paste sorting worksheet.
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Adjective Posters
Get your students to use new words to describe objects with this set of 13 bright and colorful posters.
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Paragraph Study Grammar Interactive PowerPoint
Interactive PowerPoint presentation allowing students to learn and review grammar by highlighting paragraphs.
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Holiday Adjective Worksheet Pack
Have some festive fun using printable Christmas adjective worksheets to practice describing nouns.
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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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Spooky Adjectives - Halloween Activity Sheets
Bewitch your students into learning about adjectives with Halloween printables for first and second grades.
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Halloween A to Z - Vocabulary Activity
Build. a spooktacular vocabulary and boost knowledge of parts of speech with a printable Halloween A to Z worksheet.
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Halloween Adjectives Word Search - Lower Grades
Bring in the Halloween spirit this year, starting with a printable Halloween word search filled with spooky adjectives!
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Color by Parts of Speech (Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Pronouns, Prepositions, and Adverbs) – Toucan
Practice identifying different parts of speech with this color by code worksheet.
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Parts of Speech - Color by Code Worksheet
Follow the color code to reveal the mystery image with a fun color-by-code worksheet.
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Parts of Speech Word Search – Nouns, Adjectives, and Verbs – Worksheet
A word search where students find and categorize nouns, adjectives and verbs.
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Using Descriptive Adjectives - Tree Sloth Writing Prompt
Help your struggling writers build their skills with a descriptive paragraph prompt worksheet about tree sloths.
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Valentine's Day - 3rd Grade English Worksheets
Review and practice a wide range of grammar skills with a pack of printable 3rd grade writing worksheets.
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Football Mystery Grid Worksheet - Parts of Speech
Follow the color-coded parts of speech guide to fill in the word grid and reveal a Football-themed mystery image.
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Color Adjectives Word Wall
A colorful word wall display to help support students color adjective use.
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Fall Parts of Speech Sort - Nouns Verbs Adjectives
Review three parts of speech by sorting nouns, verbs, and adjectives with a parts of speech sorting activity.
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Grammar TVs - Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Pronouns, Common Nouns, and More
Teach your students about nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, common nouns, and more parts of speech with a fun set of tv-themed parts of speech posters.
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Comparative and Superlative Adjectives Interactive Puzzles
Provide your students with engaging, interactive activities to help them improve their usage of comparative and superlative adjectives.
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Father's Day Worksheet - Adjectives A to Z
Use adjectives to describe dads or father figures this Father’s Day.
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Pumpkin Parts of Speech Worksheets
Review three parts of speech by sorting nouns, verbs, and adjectives with these four pumpkin-themed cut-and-paste worksheets.
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Google Slides - Adjectives Interactive Activity
Provide your students with engaging, interactive activities to help them improve their usage of descriptive adjectives.
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Color-by-Code Parts of Speech- Back to School Worksheet
Use this color by part of speech worksheet as a back to school activity with your students.
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Adjective Emoji Four in a Row
Match emoji picture cards with their corresponding descriptive adjectives with a fun game of Four-in-a-Row.
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Bowling Game - Parts of Speech
Practice recognizing parts of speech by matching 36 word cards to noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, and preposition pins.
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Parts of Speech Card Game – Editable
An editable parts of speech card game.
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Color by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives - Whale
A fun activity to use when learning about nouns, verbs, and adjectives.