Homophones & Parts of Speech: Interactive Unit Guide

A bicyle can't stand on its own because it's two-tired .

Yay for corny homophone jokes.... that statement may be redundant.

We have another outlier unit this year…in fact, I don’t teach any morphemes at all. Think of

this unit as Foundations 2.0. That’s because I’m not ready to introduce suffixes until students can define nouns, verbs, and adjectives/adverbs. Students typically bomb the parts-of-speech portion of my pre-assessments. Even if they recall that a noun is a “person, place, or thing,” that elementary definition isn’t sufficient to truly understand the function of derivational suffixes (which change the part of speech of a word).

My Parts of Speech Anchor Chart.

For example, most suffixes that modify bases into nouns produce abstract, not concrete, things (e.g., agreement, identity, racism, exposure). Therefore, my working definition of a noun is “concrete and abstract things.” We spend several days analyzing nouns vs. verbs vs. adjectives/adverbs and learning the necessary vocabulary to fully comprehend these concepts.

You may have noticed I'm combining adjectives and adverbs into one concept. That's intentional. For the purpose of this class, which is a literacy intervention, my main goal is for students to understand that these parts of speech describe. I don't think we need to spend time parsing over whether the word is describing a noun or verb.

It’s worth dedicating two to three weeks to this unit. Constructing solid foundational knowledge of the parts of speech allows me to group prefixes and suffixes by inflection and derivation. The result? I can teach almost double the number of morphemes I used to! This is critical because, in addition to comprehending the terms, students need to be able to syllabicate. Each morpheme becomes another recognizable “chunk.”

I think teaching suffixes according to their derivations, rather than their abstract definitions,

is more meaningful for students.  When planning this curriculum, I asked myself, "What do I actually do in real life? What is realistic for students to do?" I realized that when I came across a word with -ion, for example, I rarely thought, "Oh, this is the state of...". No. I thought, "Okay, this is some kind of thing." That at least gets me in the ballpark, and I think with students, that's my goal. Let's get them in the ballpark when trying to define an unfamiliar word, because honestly, that's what's realistic. If they can at least say, "Yup, I'm pretty sure it's a thing [or action or descriptive]," then they can get the gist of the sentence.

My Homophones Anchor Chart

I include homophones in this unit for a few reasons. For one, students have got to learn how to spell these ultra high frequency words! I explain to students that writing with misspelled homophones looks unprofessional and could cost them a job offer or thousands of dollars if they misspell on an important document or signage. This year I may students them go on a scavenger hunt around the school for misspelled homophones. They are everywhere and it does not represent our school well. We are doing students a disservice by not ensuring they've mastered these homophones which are typically taught in later primary grades.

Additionally, I think understanding the concept of homophones helps students grasp the reasoning behind spelling variations. Morphology is all about the study of meaning, and while not every homophone is a single morpheme, all are grounded in meaning. For example, when learning vowel teams, a student may better internalize the difference between meat and meet if they understand that these words carry two distinct meanings.

You can grab the printable Homophones and Parts of Speech Unit Plan here. You'll also want the Word Bank  for the capture sheets and brainstorming, and perhaps the anchor charts for student reference. While students work independently, I use this time to provide targeted phonemic awareness instruction. Below is the interactive Unit Plan where you can find tons of helpful links. Each blog post will include the typical grouping, methodology, suggested duration, and rationale. I include the objectives in the chart to give you a quick overview. The PDF column will take you to directly to TPT. Lastly, I note how each objective applies specifically to this unit.

Homophones and Parts of Speech Mastery Goal: 

Define and identify nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,  commonly misspelled homophones.

Day	Blog Posts	The PDFs	Objectives	Unique to this Unit
tool	None	Word Bank	Provide the instructor with a bank of words for instruction.	Core vocabulary included.
		None	Phonology Full Period
1	How To: Introduce a New Morphology Concept	Introduction to Parts of Speech	Use inquiry to develop shared definitions of key terms.	This is the only unit in which this activity is included in order to introduce foundational terms.
2	How To: Introduce a New Morphology Concept	Introduction to Homophones	Use inquiry to develop shared definitions of key terms.	This is the only unit in which this activity is included in order to introduce foundational terms.
3	How to: SLAM!	SLAM!	Enhance comprehension of key vocabulary through word generation, comparison, and contextual application in a competitive format.	New to this unit.
4	How To: Explain Why	Explain Why: Parts of Speech	Use syntactic and semantic context clues to identify the part of speech of unknown or omitted words in sentences.	Explain Why is typically reserved for our phonology units.
5	How To: Explain Why	Explain Why: Homophones	Use syntactic and semantic context clues to identify the correct homophone.	Explain Why is typically reserved for our phonology units.
6-7	How To: Sort & Sum the Story	Sort & Sum the Story	Identify, define, and categorize homophones and parts of speech.	Students do not use morphemic segmentation for this unit.
8	How To: Morpheme Card Review	Morpheme Card Review	Review morphemes to build automaticity.	Going forward flashcards from previous units will be included.
9	How To: Match & Fill	Match & Fill	Apply context clues to complete cloze sentences.	Going forward the matching sections will include previously taught morphemes.
10	How To: List, Opposite, Sentence (LOS)	List, Opposite, Sentence (LOS)	Enhance comprehension of key vocabulary through word generation, comparison, and contextual application.	n/a
12	How To: How Many Do You Know?	How Many Do You Know?	Generate concise definitions (1–2 words) for vocabulary terms containing targeted morphemes	N/A
13	How To: Jeopardy Quiz Review	Jeopardy Quiz Review	Review content in preparation for the quiz.	N/A
13	How To: Morphology Quizzes	Quiz	Assess understanding of the unit objective.	N/A
Daily	How To: Phonemic Awareness	None	Develop phonemic awareness.	N/A
Any	How To: Bananagrams	Bananagrams	Apply morphological knowledge to build words.	N/A