Compound nouns are nouns that have been created by joining two words.
There are three types.
– Kingdom (entrance / bathroom / water park)
– Open (post / real estate / night watchman)
– With script (mother-in-law / surprise box)
When you’re teaching compound nouns to your students, it makes sense to spend most of your time exploring the joined type.
This is because the open ones are easy to understand. They are actually just pairs of commonly used adjective nouns.
In turn, scripts are rare. It is usually enough to present them and show some examples.
With that in mind, here are some joined compound noun lesson ideas!
1. Write a combination of simple words on the board and ask your students to use them to create as many compound nouns as they can. Try these words: air, back, hand, bed, death, clock, bed, earache, farm, farm, hand, foot, step, hairline, cut in half, homemade. After a few minutes, ask four or five students to suggest other words to add to the list.
2. Focus on one word and see how many different endings you can find. For example: earache, eardrum, earlobe, earphone, earmuff, earphone, earring, ear reach.
A fun way to get younger students to find the answers is to offer cloze sentences that can only be answered with a compound noun that begins with a word. For example: I have a very bad hearing _____. A serious ear infection can cause ear _____ to burst. I have one ear_____ pierced with two earrings. I have heard ______ the page I want you to read.
Other good opening words are land, great, hand, and head. A dictionary is a quick way to look up all possible combinations.
3. Challenge your students to think of 100 compound nouns at the end of the week.
This works fine if they have a page titled “100 compound nouns”. They can start by writing 4 or 5 columns and writing the numbers from 1 to 100. This can be done every day as a class activity or as homework. A dictionary is a great resource for this activity.
This could be extended the following week by asking each student to contribute to the class collection. Words can be written on index cards and pinned on a bulletin board or large poster board. Setting a goal of 300 words or more can help motivate students.
This extension activity could also be a great small group assignment for motivated students who thrive on challenges.
