Are your students ready to learn all about adjectives? These printable adjective worksheets are the perfect way to teach this important skill in a fun and interactive way!
I love teaching adjectives! They're a great way to help your students make their writing more interesting. Stories and other writing activities take on a new life with proper adjectives (and adverbs... but that's a post for another day!)
However, adjectives can be a bit tricky to learn at first! There are several different types of adjectives, and we often confuse them with adverbs as well.
Teaching adjectives in elementary school
In early elementary school, we keep it pretty simple for young children. We define an adjective as a describing word. It is a word specifically used to describe a noun.
On the most basic level, these adjectives typically describe how something looks or what something feels like. Adjectives can sometimes be described as 'wow words' as they add some 'wow' to your sentences or your story! You can download these FREE wow word task cards here.
Start with concrete experiences in kindergarten or the primary years whenever possible. Prioritise any opportunities when students can physically interact with the item to learn more about it. This can look like holding and touching items to discuss as a class.
- The ball is bouncy.
- The dog is fluffy.
- The apple is red.
Eventually, your students will be ready to pair the noun with the adjective. This turns into more complex sentences that place the adjective before the noun.
- The fluffy dog chewed on the bone.
- The bouncy ball bounced down the field.
- The red apple tasted sweet.
As students get older, they can pair their adjectives with prepositional phrases to add more detail to their sentences. They can also add adverbs to modify the verbs for even more dimension.
Eventually, you'll introduce your students to different kinds of adjectives, including comparative and superlative.
The best part of teaching adjectives is watching your students' writing skills explode! Almost overnight, their writing will go from stilted sentences to colourful, expressive sentences that tell a story.
Get your adjectives worksheets today!
All the resources you'll see below are included as part of The Hive, an all-in-one teaching companion that can help you track your daily lesson plans, activities, and more all in one handy spot. It's like having a super organised co-teacher in your pocket!
You can pull up any of these evidence-based worksheets, activities, or instructional materials at a moment's notice. There are even 10 videos about different types of adjectives that you can click and play immediately! This is how to teach smarter, not harder!
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Best Interactive Adjective Worksheets, Activities, and Games for Kids
These resources all used evidence-based practices to help teach and reinforce this new learning in developmentally appropriate ways. We prefer hands-on, open-ended tasks that allow students to apply their learning on their own.
Although there are some worksheets here, most of these are interactive slideshows, task cards, and even games. They're so much more fun than the boring grammar worksheets of the past!
Match the Adjectives Worksheet
There are two printable adjective worksheets available on The Hive in addition to a wide variety of interactive games, slides, and other activities.
These printable worksheets are perfect for kids just learning adjectives as they focus on that initial understanding of what an adjective is on a basic level.
Descriptive adjectives tend to focus on:
On these pages, students match a picture with an adjective to describe how something looks or feels. These are only available for members of The Hive, so start your free 14 day trial today!
Adjective Task Cards
Similar to the worksheets above, these task cards offer a more open-ended approach to the same task. With these task cards, kids develop their own ways of describing how things feel or look and practice using adjectives in a sentence. As they get comfortable with this activity, they'll better understand adjectives and have an easier time remembering what they are!
Choose an activity about how things look or how things feel. They'd both be great for independent practice or small groups!
Superlative Adjectives Slideshow
Superlative adjectives are a specific kind of adjectives used to compare multiple things. Who is the best, the tallest, the fastest, or the funniest?
Many superlative adjectives end in -est, but sometimes, we must add the word "most" instead. For example, we say "most helpful" instead of "helpfulest."
This superlative adjective slideshow is a fantastic way to teach these skills in depth and reinforce them with lots of practice!
Comparative Adjectives Slideshow
I've created a slideshow for teaching comparative adjectives as well. These adjectives typically only compare two items or people, like saying someone is bigger or faster than someone else.
You often add -er to the end of the comparative adjectives, although there are always exceptions! Sometimes, you must add "more" or "less" before the initial adjective.
For example, she is "less helpful" than her brother or "more generous" than her sister.
Don't worry - these slides make it easy to remember the correct adjectives for each phrase!
Comparative and Superlative Adjectives Matching Game
Once your students understand these different kinds of adjectives, it's time to put them together! In this comparative and superlative adjectives game, your students will organise the adjectives by their root word.
For example, they'd find "older" as the comparative adjective and "oldest" as the superlative. The activity is hands-on and easy enough, even for the primary grades!
Shades of Meaning - Interactive Adjectives Activity
I absolutely love teaching shades of meaning! This skill focuses more on finding an adjective with the right connotation instead of using it properly in a sentence, etc. This skill can really elevate your students' writing skills quickly, and it's something more teachers should cover in the early grades!
Basically, this shades of meaning activity has students rank adjectives by intensity. It's all about noticing the subtle differences between different adjectives. Are you tired, or are you exhausted? Are you mad, or are you furious?
Students naturally pick up on the nuances connected to these words as they speak and read, but this exercise makes it more explicit.
I highly recommend adding a Shades of Meaning display to your classroom writing wall so your budding writers can choose the best adjective to get their point across every time!
Adjectives and Adverbs - Self-Correcting Slides
One of the trickiest parts of learning about adjectives is not getting them confused with adverbs! The names sound so similar, and kids always stumble over them initially.
These self-correcting adjective and adverb slides make it easy to practice this important skill in a colourful, interactive way. There are over 500 slides to choose from! Use them with the whole class during instruction or as a support during independent practice or small groups.
Adjective or Adverb Clip Cards
Want some low-prep grammar resources? These printable task cards are perfect for adding to your reading workshop. Students look at the images and then clip the correct answer - either adjective or adverb. They're especially well suited for 1st Grade and 2nd Grade.
Adjectives and Adverbs Task Cards
These adjective and adverb task cards are perfect for other kids in 3rd Grade or 4th Grade! They follow the instructions on the task card to use either an adverb or an adjective. For example, the card may instruct them to write a sentence using the adjective ferociously.
This sort of practice is more fun than just filling in more grammar worksheets, yet it practises several skills at the same time: writing complete sentences and using adverbs and adjectives properly. Plus, it's open-ended, so your students will get a chance to be creative!
Describe It Task Cards
At the end of the day, an adjective is a descriptive word. It's there to tell you something specific about a noun. These task cards challenge your students to use their knowledge of adjectives to describe a variety of nouns in as many ways as possible!
For example, what words can you think of to describe an apple or a bear?
This activity focuses on the descriptive part of learning adjectives, and it's impressive to see how many words your students can come up with!
Describe a Setting
I LOVE describing settings with my students, using our senses to describe what we can see, hear, feel, touch and smell!
In The Hive, you'll not only find a range of writing templates and writing scaffolds for describing settings, but you'll also find videos where I describe a variety of settings using my senses.
Parts of Speech Game
Once your students have learned nouns, verbs, and adjectives, they're ready for this parts of speech game! It's so much more fun than completing different parts of speech worksheets.
Students must spin the spinner and find a word that matches that part of speech. Alternatively, use a dice or create your own dice.
This can be done as independent work, but it's much more fun as a partner game!
Parts of Speech Clip cards
These Parts of Speech Clip Cards are another interactive activity to help students identify the difference between nouns, verbs and adjectives!
Parts of Speech Display
These rainbow Parts of Speech posters show examples of the different types of adjectives: comparative, superlative, quality, quantity, number, demonstrative, interrogative, proper etc.
They also show students the order that adjectives should be listed, if students are using more than one adjective:
- Number
- Opinion
- Size
- Age
- Shape
- Colour
- Origin
- Material
You'll find a range of different versions of these Parts of Speech posters here, including rainbow, neutral and a range of other decor themes.
Looking for more?
There are loads of ways to learn about adjectives using The Hive's digital learning tools! You can create your own word banks of adjectives (or use The Hive's growing bank of word lists) and apply them in a range of different learning apps, including our digital spinner.
Or - why not try our famous Roll a Silly Sentence tool? Simply add in your decodable word filters, then click 'allow adjectives'.
