Students in Mrs. Kratochvil's seventh and eighth grade English classes have been studying parts of speech. They searched through newspapers in pursuit of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs to cut out and glue to class posters. This activity reinforced classroom lessons, as well as reminded students that adjectives are anchored to the nouns they describe and adverbs can bounce just like a ball! A surprise realization from this work was that adverbs are difficult to find in large print in headlines. Writers more often focus on nouns and verbs for headlines.

Students in Mrs. Kratochvil's English classes competed in "Sentence Slam." Mrs. Kratochvil shared a noun, and two students raced to slam an appropriate verb while repeating the noun and verb out loud. Quite a rousing learning experience! The excitement for this activity didn't even wane when Mrs. Kratochvil told her students they had to add adverbs to their sentences. Way to go, class!