Pronoun Test: What Does My Child Need to Know?

Elementary Pronoun Overview

Personal Pronouns

In first grade, your child will begin learning about pronouns. At this beginning level, your student will be expected to understand about personal and possessive pronouns. Your first grader should be able to identify and use each type of pronoun correctly.

Personal pronouns are used to replace a noun. Common personal pronouns that your first grader should know are 'I,' 'you,' 'he,' 'she' and 'it.' In order to replace a noun that shows ownership, your child will need to know about possessive pronouns. This would include pronouns like his, mine and yours. To provide your child with practice using these pronouns, you could say a sentence aloud without using pronouns, like, 'Tim needs Tim's pen.' Then, ask your child to revise this sentence using pronouns, like, 'He needs his pen.'

Reflexive Pronouns

At the second grade level, your child will be introduced to reflexive pronouns. These pronouns always act as an object of a sentence and will never be found as the subject. Examples of singular reflexive pronouns are 'myself,' 'itself,' 'herself,' 'himself' and 'yourself.' 'Themselves,' 'yourselves' and 'ourselves' are plural reflexive pronouns that your child should know. For example, in the sentence, 'I drew that picture myself', myself would be the reflexive pronoun that refers to the subject I.

Function and Agreement

Pronoun lessons in the third grade mainly focus on pronouns-antecedents agreement. At this grade level, it will be important for your child to know the functions of the main parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs). Your third grader should also be able to identify each of these within a sentence. To provide your child with some practice, you could write sentences that require him or her to fill in the blank with an appropriate pronoun. In the sample sentence below, your child should fill in the blank with 'they'.

Joe and his brother went to the store. _ got milk and bread for their mother.

Relative Pronouns

In the fourth grade, your child will learn about relative pronouns. In a sentence, these pronouns relate a relative clause to the noun that it modifies. Relative pronouns, such as 'whom' and 'who,' are used to refer to people. 'That' and 'whose' are relative pronouns that can be used when referring to things, people, ideas or qualities.

If a pronoun is needed to refer to something other than a person, the pronoun 'which' should be used. For example, consider the sentence, 'Do you know which house Ronnie lives in?' Here, the word 'which' is a relative pronoun that refers to Ronnie's house.