Adjective Worksheet for Class 1
Describing words, 3 free printable PDFs with answers
A describing word, called an adjective in school, is a word that tells you what a naming word is like. In Ravi has a red cap, cap is the naming word and red is the describing word. Class 1 children meet five kinds: colour, size, shape, number, and how something feels or tastes. In a short sentence the describing word almost always sits just before the naming word, which is the fastest way to teach a child to find it.
There are three printable sheets below. Sheet 1 covers spotting a describing word, choosing the right one, sorting describing words from naming words, and adding their own. Sheet 2 practises the same skills with completely fresh sentences, for a second session later in the week. Sheet 3 goes a step further: two describing words in one sentence, words for how something feels, tastes and sounds, and a short story to underline. The answer keys for all three are further down this page.
No sign-up. Answer keys are further down this page.
- A describing word tells you what a naming word is like. A naming word tells you what something is. Mixing up those two is the single most common Class 1 mistake on this topic.
- Teach position, not definition. In a Class 1 sentence the describing word sits just before the naming word, so a child can find it by looking rather than by reasoning.
- Spotting a describing word and using one are different skills. A sheet that only asks your child to underline never gets them to the second.
- Describing words are the shortest route from a grammar exercise into real speaking and writing, because a child can add one to a sentence they already say every day.
What a describing word actually is
The textbook calls it an adjective. Your child's teacher, quite sensibly, calls it a describing word, and that is the better name to use at home, because it says exactly what the word does.
Every sentence a Class 1 child writes has a naming word in it: cat, bag, bus, Meera. A describing word is the word you put next to that naming word to say what it is like. Nothing else in the sentence changes.
- The cat becomes the black cat.
- My bag becomes my new bag.
- A bus becomes a big bus.
That is the whole idea, and most children get it in about two minutes when it is shown to them with real objects instead of a definition. The part that takes longer is doing it the other way round: looking at a finished sentence and pulling the describing word back out of it. That is what the worksheet on this page practises, and it is what school tests ask for.
Try this before you print anything. Point at something in the room and ask two questions in a row. What is it? A cup. What is it like? Hot. The second answer is a describing word, and your child just made one without being taught a single rule. Do it three times, then hand over the sheet.
The five kinds of describing words Class 1 meets
Class 1 does not cover every describing word in English. It covers five groups, and almost every question your child will be asked this year uses a word from one of them. Knowing the five makes a worksheet far less random, because your child starts looking for a type rather than guessing.
| Kind | Words your child will meet | Example sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Colour | red, blue, black, white, green | Ravi has a red cap. |
| Size | big, small, tall, long, short | I saw a tall tree. |
| Shape | round, flat, thin, fat | An egg is round. |
| Number | one, two, six, ten, many | Priya is six years old. |
| How it feels or tastes | hot, cold, wet, soft, sweet | Meera ate a sweet mango. |
The number row is the one that surprises parents. Most of us think of numbers as a separate thing altogether, but Class 1 treats them as describing words, because they answer the question how many. If your child says two is not a describing word, they are thinking like an adult, and the school test will still mark it wrong.
Notice how short all of these words are. That is deliberate. A describing word your child cannot read is not teaching grammar, it is quietly turning the sheet into a reading test. Every word on the printable sheet below is three or four letters, or a word from the Class 1 sight list.
A quick game for the car or the kitchen: name a kind, and your child gives a word. "Give me a size word." Big. "Give me a taste word." Sweet. Twenty seconds each time, and it builds the exact vocabulary the worksheet asks for.
How to find the describing word in a sentence
Class 1 children are usually taught this as a definition, and definitions are hard to use under exam pressure. Position is much easier. In nearly every sentence a six year old meets, the describing word sits directly in front of the naming word, so it can be found by looking rather than by thinking.
Find the naming word first
Ask "what is this sentence about?" In Anu has a new bag, it is the bag. Nouns come earlier in the Class 1 syllabus than adjectives for exactly this reason: your child already has the tool they need.
Look at the word just before it
Put a finger on the naming word and slide it one word to the left. In a new bag, that lands on new. Skip over a, an and the, which your child already knows are joining words, not describing words.
Check it with one question
Ask "what is the bag like?" New. If the word answers that question, it is the describing word. If it does not, slide one more word left. Two seconds of checking turns a guess into a method your child can repeat alone.
There is one common exception worth showing your child, because Class 1 papers use it constantly: the describing word can also come after is. The sky is blue. An egg is round. The tea is hot. Same word doing the same job, standing in a different place. Teach it as a second pattern, not as an oddity, and it stops being confusing.
The mistake almost every Class 1 child makes
Ask a class to underline the describing word in The black dog ran and a good number will underline dog. It is the most familiar word on the line, and it feels like the important one. This is the naming word and describing word confusion, and it is worth fixing directly rather than hoping repetition sorts it out.
The fix is two questions, always asked in the same order:
- What is it? The answer is the naming word. Dog, cat, bag, bus, Meera, school.
- What is it like? The answer is the describing word. Black, soft, new, big, wet.
Exercise 3 is built entirely around this, on Worksheet 1 and again on Worksheet 2. Your child sorts eight mixed words into two boxes, and there is nowhere to hide: a word is either something you can point to, or something you can say about it. If your child gets that exercise right, the rest of the topic is safe. If they get it wrong, go back to two questions with real objects before doing any more written work, and use the second sheet a few days later to check it has stuck.
Marking tip: if your child underlines the naming word instead, do not simply correct it. Ask them "can you point at a black?" They cannot, and they will laugh, and that is the moment the difference lands. You can point at a dog. You cannot point at a black.
Answer keys for all three sheets
Every exercise on all three sheets is answered below. Most have one right answer. The exercises where your child writes a describing word of their own are marked open, because a child who can only tick the expected box has not learned to describe anything, so those say what counts as correct and list the words children usually give.
Worksheet 1: Describing Words
Exercise 1: Underline the describing word
- a. red (Ravi has a red cap.)
- b. big (The big dog sat down.)
- c. sweet (Meera ate a sweet mango.)
- d. tall (I saw a tall tree.)
Exercise 2: Choose the best describing word from the box
- a. The sky is blue. (colour)
- b. An egg is round. (shape)
- c. Priya is six years old. (number)
- d. A bus is big. (size)
Exercise 3: Write each word in the right box
- Describing words: hot, soft, new, wet
- Naming words: cat, bag, school, Meera
Exercise 4: Write one describing word for each picture (open)
Any word that truly fits the picture is correct. The usual answers:
- Lemon: yellow or sour
- Elephant: big or grey
- Ant: small or black
- Ice cream: cold or sweet
- Sun: hot or round
Exercise 5: Add your own describing word (open)
Mark it right if the word tells you what that naming word is like. The usual answers:
- a. Anu has a new / red / big bag.
- b. Dev has a blue / old / small cap.
- c. I can see a big / red / long bus.
- d. Sara ate a hot / sweet / soft bun.
Worksheet 2: More Describing Words
Exercise 1: Underline the describing word
- a. blue (Kiran has a blue pen.)
- b. small (The small cat sat down.)
- c. cold (Dev drank cold milk.)
- d. long (I saw a long train.)
Exercise 2: Choose the best describing word from the box
- a. The leaf is green. (colour)
- b. A roti is flat. (shape)
- c. I have two eyes. (number)
- d. The tea is hot. (how it feels)
Exercise 3: Write each word in the right box
- Describing words: cold, long, old, small
- Naming words: bus, pen, Ravi, park
Exercise 4: Write one describing word for each picture (open)
Any word that truly fits the picture is correct. The usual answers:
- Banana: yellow or sweet
- Tree: tall or green
- Balloon: red or round
- Ice: cold or hard
- Bus: big or long
Worksheet 3: Two Describing Words
Exercise 1: Underline both describing words
- a. big, red (Ravi has a big red ball.)
- b. tall, green (I saw a tall green tree.)
- c. hot, soft (Anu ate a hot soft roti.)
- d. new, blue (Dev has a new blue bag.)
Exercise 2: How does it feel, taste or sound?
- a. The big bell is loud. (sound)
- b. This lemon is sour. (taste)
- c. My bed is soft. (feel)
- d. The ice is cold. (feel)
Exercise 3: Write two describing words of your own (open)
Mark it right if both words tell you what the naming word is like, and neither one is a naming word. The order does not matter. The usual answers:
- a. Meera has a big red / small new box.
- b. I can see a long red / big blue kite.
- c. We sat on a soft green / big wet mat.
Exercise 4: Underline every describing word
There are eight, in this order:
- big park, tall tree, six birds, green birds
- loud song, small dog, soft bun, the bun was sweet
Six or seven out of eight is a good score at this age. The two most often missed are six, because it looks like a number and not a describing word, and sweet, because it sits after was instead of before a naming word.
One thing to watch for in the open exercises, Worksheet 1 exercise 5 and Worksheet 3 exercise 3. If your child writes a word that is not a describing word at all, say Anu has a runs bag, that is not carelessness, it is the naming and describing confusion showing up again in a place where nobody can pattern-match their way past it. Go back to exercise 3 and the two questions before moving on.
Mark it together, not alone. For anything wrong, ask "why did you pick that word?" before you say anything else. A child who underlined dog instead of black has a different problem from a child who underlined ran, and their answer tells you which one you are dealing with in about five seconds.
Getting your child to add their own describing words
Most adjective worksheets stop at spotting. Your child underlines red in twelve sentences, gets twelve ticks, and still writes I saw a dog in their notebook the next day. Spotting is recognition. Using is production, and it is a genuinely harder skill that needs to be asked for directly.
The good news is that describing words are the easiest possible place to start asking. Your child does not need a new sentence, a new tense or new vocabulary. They take a sentence they already say and slide one word into it. That is why this topic, more than nouns or prepositions, is the natural bridge out of grammar exercises and into actual speaking and writing.
Three prompts that work, in rising order of difficulty:
- Make it longer. Say a plain sentence out loud: Kiran has a bag. Ask your child to say it again with one more word in it. Anything sensible counts.
- Two words, not one. Kiran has a big new bag. Class 1 rarely asks for two, and children take the stretch happily once one is easy. This is what Worksheet 3 drills, so do it out loud a few times before you print that sheet.
- Describe without naming. You think of an object in the room, your child asks only what is it like questions, and guesses. This drills the difference between naming and describing harder than any written exercise, and it takes three minutes.
Do these out loud first, always. Speaking a describing word into a sentence is much easier than writing one, so a child who cannot yet write the sentence can still practise the thinking, and the writing follows a few weeks later.
Why the spoken half matters more than it looks
There is a quiet gap in a lot of Indian English-medium homes, and worksheets do not reveal it. A child can complete a whole adjective page correctly by pattern matching. They see a blank before a naming word and drop in a colour. Nothing in that requires them to be able to read the sentence aloud, or to use a describing word when they are actually talking.
The national picture points the same way. ASER 2024 found that 44.8% of Class 5 children in government schools could read a Class 2 level text, and that test measures reading in the regional language, not English, so English reading sits behind even that number. These are children who have filled worksheets for years. The written work kept moving. The reading did not keep up with it.
ASER 2024: 44.8% of Class 5 children in government schools could read a Class 2 level text, and that test measures reading in the regional language, not English. Grammar knowledge is rarely the missing piece. Minutes spent reading aloud, with someone listening closely enough to correct, usually is.
So when a sheet is marked, spend two more minutes on it. Ask your child to read their own finished sentences aloud, the four from Worksheet 1 exercise 5, or the short story on Worksheet 3. It uses vocabulary they have just worked with, it costs almost nothing, and within a week it will tell you whether the grammar is sitting on top of real reading or floating above it.
Nouns come first in the Class 1 sequence and everything here leans on them, so if the sorting exercise was hard, our Class 1 noun worksheet is the place to go back to. For the reading skill underneath all of it, phonics for beginners covers how to build it from the sounds up.
A worksheet can be marked. It cannot hear your child read
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Frequently asked questions
An adjective is a describing word. It tells us more about a naming word: what colour it is, how big it is, what shape it is, how many there are, or how it feels and tastes. In a Class 1 sentence like Ravi has a red cap, the word red is the adjective, because it describes the cap.
A naming word tells you what something is called: cat, bag, school, Meera. A describing word tells you what that thing is like: soft, new, big, blue. The quickest test at home is to ask two questions about the word. What is it? That answer is the naming word. What is it like? That answer is the describing word.
Start with objects in the room rather than a textbook. Hold up a cup and ask what it is like, not what it is. Collect three or four answers: hot, small, white. Then write one short sentence using their own word. Ten minutes of this, done out loud before any worksheet, teaches more than a full page of blanks.
In almost every Class 1 sentence it sits just before the naming word: a red cap, the big dog, a sweet mango. That position is the easiest clue to teach, because a child can find it by looking rather than by thinking about grammar. It can also come after is, as in The sky is blue.
Yes. Class 1 treats number words as describing words, because they answer the question how many. In Priya is six years old, the word six describes Priya. In I have two bags, the word two describes the bags. Most Class 1 textbooks group colour, size, shape, number, and how something feels or tastes together under describing words.
Yes. All three sheets are answered in full in the answer key section above, exercise by exercise, so you can mark them straight away. The open exercises, where your child writes a describing word of their own, are covered too: instead of one right answer they tell you what counts as correct, and list the words children usually give.