Common and Proper Nouns Worksheets for 1st Grade
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Skill: Telling common and proper nouns apart and capitalizing proper nouns
Teaching tips and what to try next
This fits first graders who can already pick out nouns in simple sentences. Your child's own world is the best practice material: their name, their school, their town and the current month are all proper nouns to write with a capital. For more capital-letter practice, try Capital Letters and End Punctuation, or move on to Plural Nouns With -s, -es, and -ies.
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About this worksheet
A noun names a person, place, or thing. A common noun is a general name, such as girl, city, or dog. A proper noun is the name of one special person, place, or thing, such as Emma, Chicago, or Rover, and it always starts with a capital letter. This first-grade worksheet helps children tell the two kinds apart and write proper nouns correctly.
In Part A, children read eight nouns and write whether each one is common or proper. The words come in pairs that match, such as day and Friday or city and Chicago, which shows that every proper noun has a common noun that goes with it. In Part B, children read six sentences. Each sentence has one proper noun that is missing its capital letter, such as the name of a pet, a state, a day of the week, or a month. Children find the proper noun and write it again with a capital letter.
How to use it: play a quick game before starting. Say a common noun, such as "teacher" or "street," and have your child name a proper noun to match, like the name of their teacher or the street where they live. Remind your child that names of people, pets, places, days, and months are proper nouns. For Part B, read each sentence aloud and ask, "Which word is a special name?" Then point out that the first word of a sentence gets a capital letter too.
The answer key lists every answer. This worksheet supports Common Core standard L.1.1.b. Keep practicing with our Nouns and Verbs: Sort the Bold Words worksheet and our Capital Letters and End Punctuation worksheet.