Lesson video

Hi, there.

My name is Mr. Byrne-Smith, and today I'm going to be teaching you some spelling.

It's going to be lots and lots of fun.

In today's lesson we're looking at compound nouns, so a lesson devoted to compound nouns.

I hope you're looking forward to it.

I learned a really interesting word the other day.

The word is bookkeeper.

You might think, "Hang on a second, Mr. Byrne-Smith.

That doesn't sound like a very interesting word to me." However, I learned that it's one of the only words that has three double letters in a row.

Bookkeeper.

It has a double O, followed by a double K, followed by a double E.

I wonder if you can think of any others.

Anyway, let's make a start with today's lesson.

Here's the agenda for today's lesson.

First, we're going to look at some key vocabulary.

Then we'll investigate and generate some rules before finally setting this week's spelling words.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or paper, a pencil, and then of course, your brain.

If you need to go off and get any of these things, pause the video now.

Okay, let's go through some key vocabulary.

My turn, your turn.

Compound word.

A compound word is a word made up of two or more preexisting words.

Adjective.

An adjective is a word that describes a noun.

It tells you what it's like.

Noun.

A noun is a person, place or thing.

Root word.

A root word is the most basic version of a word, so before any prefixes or suffixes have been attached.

Let's investigate and generate some rules.

Okay, I'd like you to look very carefully at these four words, and see if you can figure out what they have in common, paintbrush, goalkeeper, sandcastle, and whiteboard.

Paintbrush, goalkeeper, sandcastle, and whiteboard.

Pause the video now, and have a think.

Okay, I wonder if you've spotted what they have in common.

They're all made up of two preexisting nouns, so let's think about exactly what this means.

Here we have four words, each of which is made up of two other words.

Now, the two words they're made up of are real words, and they make sense by themselves.

In this instance, they're coming together to make a brand new word with a different meaning.

First, let's figure out the word class of these four words as they are currently.

So yes, it can be split up into two other words, but let's look at them as they are for now, and think about their word class, adjective, noun, or verb.

Let's remember an adjective describes a noun, tells you what it's like.

A noun is a person, place or thing, and a verb is a doing or a being word.

Have a careful think.

Best way to do this is to put the word into a sentence, and then figure out what the word is doing in that sentence.

Pause the video, and have a go.

Okay.

They're all nouns.

Okay.

These are words which are made up of at least two other words, and they're all nouns.

We refer to these as compound nouns.

My turn, your turn.

Compound nouns.

Compound nouns are made up of words which have their own meaning.

When those words come together, they can take on a brand new meaning.

New meaning is often linked to the meaning of the original words.

However, it's its own distinct word, and it behaves as one word.

Let's look at some examples in closer detail.

Let's take paintbrush.

What two words is paintbrush made up of? It's made up of paint and brush.

Okay.

So we know that paint brush is a noun.

When we take the individual words by themselves, paint and brush, I wonder what those words are.

I'd like you to pause the video, and have a careful think.

Paint and brush, are they adjectives, nouns or verbs? Okay.

Paint and brush are both nouns.

So here we have a compound noun, paintbrush, made up two separate nouns, paint and brush.

Let's have a look at our second example, goalkeeper.

The word goalkeeper is made up of goal and keeper.

A keeper is somebody who looks after something or who owns something.

Goal and keeper.

Are these words adjectives, nouns, or verbs? Pause the video now.

Okay.

Goal and keeper are both nouns.

So once again, we have a compound noun, goalkeeper, made up of two other nouns, goal and keeper.

Okay.

Third word, sandcastle.

Sandcastle is made up of sand and castle.

I'd like you to think of those two words carefully.

Sand and castle, are they adjectives, nouns or verbs? Pause it again now.

Okay.

Sand and castle are nouns.

Right.

So far, three out of the four compound nouns we've looked at have been made up of other nouns.

When these words come together, they take on their own meaning.

Here we have sandcastle.

Now obviously a sandcastle is a castle made out of sand.

If I talk about the word sand by itself, I'm talking about the substance often found on beaches.

If I think about the castle, I'm thinking about a big building often in the countryside.

So we have sand and castle.

Those are two very distinct and separate nouns.

When they come together, they create a third distinct and separate noun, a sandcastle, which is a little castle made out of sand.

Last of our four words, whiteboard.

Let's have a closer look.

Whiteboard is made up of the two words, white and board.

The question is, what word class are they? Pause the video now and have a careful think.

Okay.

You've got to be very careful here.

White is an adjective.

Board is a noun.

So in the majority of cases, compound nouns seem to be made up of nouns.

However, that is not always true.

Here's an example.

Our whiteboard is made up of white and board.

White is an adjective.

Therefore compound nouns are not always made up of other nouns.

Here I have two definitions.

You need to help me decide which is correct.

"Nouns made with two or more other words." "Nouns made with two or more other nouns." Which of these best describes a compound noun? Pause the video now.

Okay, the correct definition is this one.

As we just discovered with the word whiteboard, compound nouns are not always made up of other nouns.

Sometimes they're made up of nouns and adjectives.

Sometimes even they're made up of nouns and verbs, so you have to be very careful.

The safer way to get around this, is just to say that compound nouns are nouns made with two or more other words, which is a very general way of putting it, definitely the safest way of phrasing it.

Let's have a go.

Here we have the word time.

Now time is a really good word when it comes to compound nouns, because lots of compound nouns contain the word time.

They either contain it at the beginning or at the end.

An example would be lunchtime.

I'd like you to pause the video, and see how many you can come up with in one minute.

That's your challenge, compound nouns containing the word time.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay.

These are the ones I came up with, lunchtime, timekeeper, somebody who keeps time with a stopwatch, timeout, sometime, timeline.

They're the ones I managed to come up with in a minute.

I wonder how you did.

Let's have another go with the word eye.

Top tip, think about the things on or around the eye.

There's your top, top tip.

Eye is another word which is often used to form compound nouns.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay.

These are the ones I came up with, eyeball, eyelash, eyewitness.

An eyewitness is somebody who sees something happen.

Eyebrow, eyesight.

Okay.

Here we have a picture, a lovely picture of two boys playing football.

Your job is to take this picture in carefully, and see if you can find any compound nouns.

Now, when I had a look, I found three.

However, there might be more.

There are a few which are more obvious than others.

Pause the video and have a careful look.

Okay.

I found football, and goalkeeper, and goalpost.

Let's have a go with this picture.

Now, there's one very obvious one.

There are some which are less obvious.

I think in this instance, I only managed to find two, so let's see how you do.

Pause the video and have a go.

okay.

Lamppost, that's the obvious one.

So a lamppost is a post with a lamp on top.

Lamppost has an interesting double P, which sometimes doesn't look right.

However, it is.

So lamppost contains a double P.

Footpath, that's another one I came up with.

Footpath is a commonly used compound noun.

Last picture.

Here we have a picture of somebody sitting on the floor.

And I don't want to give too much away, but I'd like you to have a look, and see if you can find any compound nouns in this picture.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay.

I spotted two.

I spotted shoelace and fingernail.

I wonder if you came up with any that I didn't.

Probably.

I only managed two.

I think there are more.

Now so far, we've spotted that when joining compound nouns, you just put one next to the other.

There are no complicated spelling rules or patterns.

We can just combine the two without any real significant changes to be made.

Very rarely it's necessary to change the spelling, but not often at all.

It is very unlikely that you'll come across words, which combine and have to change spelling.

When we talk about compound nouns, we talk about three different types, solid, hyphenated, and open.

I'd like to show you what I mean by each of these using this picture.

This is a containership.

A containership is a massive, massive ship that carries containers.

Now, the term containership can be written in each of these three ways, solid, hyphenated and open.

This is called a solid compound noun.

You can see I've written containership all as one word.

This is a hyphenated compound noun.

Container-ship has been separated by a hyphen.

A hyphen is the dash between the words container and ship.

Finally, we have container ship with two separate words.

Now this is called an open compound noun.

We can tell it's still a compound noun because these two words are behaving as one noun.

These two words are not behaving as two separate nouns.

They're behaving as just the one noun, container ship.

When it comes to which of these we use, well, it comes down to personal choice and style.

Different countries do it slightly differently, and there are no real rules about it.

Actually, you can use any of these methods.

Today we've been using one of the three.

I wonder if you can help me figure out which one.

We have been using solid, the whole way through this lesson.

Solid is often the clearest way of combining two nouns to create a new noun, therefore it's an easy one to learn the spelling technique with.

Time for us to set some spelling words for this unit.

So these are this week's spelling words.

I'm going to read them out to you very slowly, and I'm going to put each on into context.

To do this, I'm going to put it into a sentence.

Some of them might need a brief explanation, which I'll give it to you, but most of them are very straightforward.

Make sure you write these down carefully and correctly because the worst thing would be to be practising the wrong spelling for the rest of the week.

First word is football.

They kicked the football so high, they wondered if it would ever come back down.

Cloakroom.

Your coat is in the cloakroom.

Don't forget it.

Now, cloakroom is an interesting one.

These days, it's where you keep your coat.

Once upon a time, people used to wear cloaks as their outer layer, so they'd put it on top of their suits, on top of their jacket.

The cloakroom's where you'd hang your cloak.

Obviously now we don't use cloaks anymore, but we do use coats.

We use the term cloakroom because it's just been left over from the time when people did wear cloaks.

Breakfast.

I forgot to have breakfast, and now I'm starving.

Playground.

They raced each other across the playground.

Fingerprint.

The fingerprint is the unique pattern that each of us has on the pads of our finger, on our fingertips.

Every fingerprint is slightly different.

If you look very carefully, you can actually see your own fingerprint.

It's made up of a number of curved and curled lines.

We each have a unique fingerprint.

Skyscraper.

Skyscraper.

A skyscraper is a really tall building.

Skyscraper is made up of the words sky and scraper.

The idea being, of course, that the buildings are so tall, they're scraping the sky.

London has a few skyscrapers.

Sunlight.

The sunlight is streaming in through the window.

Grandmother.

Grandmother.

My grandmother makes the most delicious sugar cakes.

Blackberry.

Blackberry.

Here's another example of a compound noun made up of an adjective and a noun.

Black is, of course, an adjective.

The waiter brought out an enormous blackberry pie.

Whiteboard.

Whiteboard.

Another example of a compound noun made up of a noun and an adjective.

Face the whiteboard, please, children.

Okay.

And there are 10 words.

Well done.

You've done a fantastic job.

Today we've looked at key vocabulary.

We've investigated and generated rules, and we set this week's spelling words.

Congratulations.

That's the end of the lesson.

Bye.