Adjectives, Nouns and Verbs... oh my!

This is Will's latest struggle. We just got back from Spring Break on Monday and already he is having issues. This time his issues are in language arts. He is having a very difficult time differentiating the parts of speech.

Particularly, adjectives, nouns and verbs.

I got a phone call from Mrs. Ketchum yesterday afternoon. She called to tell me that Will and the class had taken a test on Monday on these parts of speech. Will, along with 7 other classmates failed this test. So they were given the opportunity to go over it again and practice and Mrs. Ketchum gave them a Retest. Well, as it turns out Will and one other child failed it again. She was calling to tell me that she is going to give them a third test today. She asked me if I would work on it at home with him last night.

So, I told Will about the phone call. Apparently he knew she was going to be calling me. I went over the retest with him, verbally, and he got them all right. Yay! We talked about what each of these parts of speech are and he totally gets that. So, I wrote out my own sentences for him. I underlined a word and asked him to identify whether it was a noun, adjective or verb.

He did it on his own and then brought it to me. There were 12 sentences and he missed 5. That is failing. Hmpf! I was so frustrated. I could not find any rhyme or reason for why he was missing them. If I talked through it with him he seemed to catch on quickly to what the correct answer was, but on his own he missed a lot.

I wrote another page of sentences, 13 this time, and saved them for morning. After breakfast today, before he went to the bus stop I gave him this test. Again, he did the work on his own and again he missed 5 of them. Ugh! I don't know what to do.

Practice, I guess. I did find some games on a few websites that help practice parts of speech. He didn't do all that great at them either last night, but it is practice. We will just have to keep plugging away.

I am anxious to find out how he does on this third test today. I am guessing he will do as well, or as poorly, as he has done on all of them. Unless he is able to make it click somehow.

Why won't it click, though? Why can't he understand this? It is really kind of simple, isn't it? Ben was getting all the right answers on the games Will was trying to play last night. If his 7 yr old brother can get it off the bat why can't he get it after all this review?

Is there a comprehension issue? Does this prove that? It seems like when he is reading the sentence he isn't finding the meaning of the words there. I don't know if that makes sense, but that is what it seems like to me. I don't know what else can explain it.