Noun Town paper and digital resources provide a memorable way for children to learn about parts of speech. With these concrete, hands-on (or fingers-on) activities, youngsters cut and paste (or drag and drop) images onto a map. Then they match the images with words. Kids have so much fun creating their towns that they don’t even know they are learning grammar!
The rich context of the activity enables beginning readers to identify words that they might not be able to do in a different context. And, in addition to developing decoding skills, the activity is a great way to review basic sight vocabulary of content words. Both the main map activity and supplementary exercises are offered on 3 levels, so there are many opportunities for differentiation.
The Original Noun Town
The original Noun Town activities are made of paper. Detailed directions for printing enlarged maps enable you to make towns of different sizes. You can use the activity over and over, especially if you laminate the map, images, and words.
The paper resources include bulletin board graphics, so teachers can create wall-sized noun towns in their classroom or outside in the hallway. Teachers have reported receiving positive feedback about their “public” noun towns. (See below.) All the members of the school can enjoy the noun town bulletin boards while expanding their knowledge of parts of speech.
Students can create and color their very own towns with the 11 X 8.5 black-and-white towns and images. Teachers have found it useful to introduce or reinforce the large group activity with these individual elements.
Many of the Noun Town resources are editable, so you can personalize your noun town with familiar places or even the names of your students.
Verbs and Adjectives, Too!
Your student can learn about verbs and adjectives while creating towns, as well! In Verb Burg, children place images of people doing things onto a blank map, or onto noun images. Adjectives for Noun Town is a two-in-one editable resource, where students match images to both noun and adjective words and place them on a town map.
Seasonal Noun Towns
The seasonal versions of this popular activity are popular, as well. Seasonal themes can be very motivating for young children. Naturally the fall/autumn, winter, spring, and summer resources include varied maps, images, and words. The seasonal resources are available individually or in the Noun Town All Year Bundle.
Digital (Google Slides) Noun Towns
Last, but not least, I have created several Google Slides versions of Noun Town for use with different devices. Teachers love using the activities for remote learning, at centers, or as whole class activities. So far, you can combine the paper and digital versions of Noun Town or Verb Burg in a two-for-one bundle.
There are now 4 digital winter holiday digital noun town adaptations in Google Slides. These activities can act as a jumping-off point for discussions about various holidays and family traditions. The bundle is deeply discounted because of the shared winter maps and word cards.
Benefits of Noun Town Activities
- Provide concrete reinforcement of noun concept
- Give students practice decoding while reinforcing sight words
- Allow students to have fun while engaging in learning-in-disguise activity
- Provide opportunities for differentiation
- Introduce, practice, or review nouns
- Can be used with large group, small group, partners, or individuals
- Are motivating for students
- Supplementary activities include sorting and recognizing parts of speech, expanding sentences, and writing “silly stories”
- (DIGITAL) Give students experience with technology
- (DIGITAL) Include detailed instructions for working on Google DriveTM
- (DIGITAL) Can be accessed from any location where you have access to the internet, including at home
- (DIGITAL) Can be used with computer, Chromebook, or tablet; Google ClassroomTM or Google Drive
- (DIGITAL) Offer engaging drag and drop activities
Last but not Least
Now I’ve created a multi-year birthday noun town activity, digital and printable, all in one resource!
In My Noun Town Birthday Party, students can create their own birthday party by dragging and dropping images in Google Slides and matching them with words. Or they can draw their own birthday party with the printable version.
Your students will have fun creating their virtual or printable birthday party in Noun Town! In the digital version, kids drag and drop images to the town and match them with words. With the paper version, they draw their birthday party. Suggestions for differentiation and checklists, birthday badge, and About Me sentence completion. A great way for your students to celebrate their birthdays and learn at the same time!
Teacher Comments and Benefits
I’ll end with a few of the comments I have received about the noun town resources. I have boldfaced possible ways you could use your Noun Town in your own classroom or school.
*One of my all time favorite first grade activities! Love the noun towns. :). My kids have so much fun doing these. I usually hang them up in the hallway and get so many compliments. Thank you for a fun, awesome product!
*Such a simple idea, and one that really catches children’s imaginations. Full of activities and really helps get the idea of a noun across to them.
*Very engaging for students. I love the poster that I can laminate and hang to represent Noun Town. Students kept asking when we could make more towns weeks after we’d done this one.
*My students loved this activity. They had to choose a certain number of pictures to put on their Noun Town and then they were given labels to write down the name of each noun. If they named their noun, they had to capitalize it. They looked really good hanging up at beginning of the year conferences!
*I had my students first create their own personal noun town, modeling for them how many people, places, and things I was looking for. Next, we created our classroom noun town together and labeled everything, they loved it!
*So much fun that my kids ask to play it during constructive play and wet weather!
*This is the best following directions activity and it always stimulates a good conversation learning task.
Have fun building parts of speech towns with your students year after year! And keep an eye out for upcoming additions to the Noun Town family…
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