Even if you brought home straight A’s in grade school, it can be challenging to remember all of the lessons you once had memorized. The basics of capitalization and spelling might be easy, but do you remember your lesson on progressive verb tenses? Can you identify a narrative point of view? Let’s see if you could still hold your own in a fifth-grade grammar classroom.
1) Identify the verb tense in the following sentence:
We have played many games this weekend.
a) past simple
b) present perfect
c) future progressive
We’re starting with a tricky one. In fifth grade, students learn verb tenses, including past, present, and future. The correct answer is b) present perfect. The example sentence discusses a completed action, which is what perfect tense verbs are designed to do. The progressive verb tense — also known as continuous tense — describes an action in progress.
2) Identify the pronouns and the point of view in this sentence:
She and I drove to the pet store.
Can you spot the pronouns? In this sentence, the pronouns are “she” and “I.” A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. For example, this sentence could read, “Nancy and I drove to the pet store,” but the pronoun “she” is used instead of the name. “We drove to the pet store” uses the pronoun “we” to replace both original pronouns.
What about the point of view? Remember that the point of view in writing refers to the story’s narrative voice: first person, second person, or third person. The sentence above is written in first person.
You can determine the point of view by the pronouns. First-person narratives use “I” and “we” pronouns to show the narrator is telling their own story. Second-person narratives use “you” to talk to the reader directly. Third-person point of view uses “he,” “she,” “it,” and “they” because a narrator is telling a story about someone else.
3) Choose the correct homophone for the sentence below:
The trees are losing ______ leaves.
a) they’re
b) their
c) there
Before autocorrect, choosing the correct homophone was a tricky task. The answer here is b) their, which is possessive. It means the leaves belong to the tree. “They’re” is a contraction of “they are,” and “there” is about location, so those options don’t make sense.
Homophones are terms that have the same pronunciation but different meanings. Other commonly confused homophones students learn at the fifth-grade level include “your” and “you’re”; “too,” “to,” and “two”; and “whose” and “who’s.”
4) What is the plural form of each word below?
Tooth = ____________
Person = ____________
Moose = ____________
Cactus = ____________
If you recognized these as irregular plural nouns, you’re a fifth-grade grammar superstar. Irregular nouns don’t easily become plural by adding “-s” or “-es” to the end of the word. Students need to memorize the correct forms for each noun. The answers for these words are as follows:
Tooth = Teeth
Person = People
Moose = Moose
Cactus = Cacti
Many irregular plurals can trip up adults long past the fifth grade.
Memorandum = Memoranda
Neurosis = Neuroses
Son-in-law = Sons-in-law
5) Add the necessary commas and quotation marks to this sentence:
It’s Saturday Marko explained which means I have swimming lessons.
Complex punctuation can be tricky for fifth graders and adults alike. It requires understanding the sentence’s intention and the correct punctuation rules. The correct sentence looks like this:
“It’s Saturday,” Marko explained, “which means I have swimming lessons.”
In American English, commas and periods go inside quotation marks. The rules are different in British English, but we’re sticking to American grammar rules.
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