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Articles are a simple yet critical part of speech. This lesson helps your fourth graders distinguish the three
articles and understand how to use them correctly in sentences.
Learning Objectives
Students will be able to identify articles and use them correctly in a sentence.
Attachments
Introduction (5 minutes)
Ask students to define a noun (a person, place, object, or idea), and then ask them to define adjectives
(words that describe nouns). Give a few examples such as "big (adjective) dog (noun)" and "red
(adjective) house (noun)."
Ask students to consider the words a, an, and the. Ask them what part of speech these words belong to,
and listen to their responses.
Tell students that these three little words are a type of adjective, called articles or determiners, because
they help us describe nouns. They tell us whether we are speaking of a specific noun or a noun in
general.
Distribute the "Amanda and the Panda" story to each student and project it on a document reader.
Read the first couple of sections of text and demonstrate how you identify the articles by circling them.
For each article you circle, explain to students why the author chose a definite or indefinite article (i.e., in
the first sentence, "As soon as they walked in the gate, Amanda and Avery made a beeline for the
enclosure where Penelope lived," the author wrote "the gate" because he is refering to a specific gate,
and he wrote "a beeline" because the characters made a random beeline instead of a specific beeline
route).
Call on students to come up to the document camera to read the next sentences and circle the articles,
while also providing an explanation as to why the particular article makes sense in the sentence.
Differentiation
Support:
Allow students to work with a partner for the Independent Work Time.
For native Spanish speakers, make the connection between English articles and those in Spanish (el, la,
los, las, un, una, unos, unas).
Enrichment:
Have advanced students complete the exercise on articles on a tablet or computer (see optional
materials).
Assessment (5 minutes)
Ask students to choose one of the text sections from the Amanda and the Panda worksheet, and read the
sentences aloud to the class with the articles omitted. Students will see how awkward the sentences
sound without them.
Instruct students to find a piece of their own writing and cross out the articles. Have them each read a
paragraph sans articles to a partner. Invite a few students to read aloud a paragraph with and without
articles to compare.
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Remember: An article is a word used before a noun to clarify the noun. English articles are
usually ‘”a,” which is used before a word that starts with a consonant sound; “an,” which is used
before a word that starts with a vowel sound, and “the.”
A or An?
Put the correct article, a or an, in the blank.
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