3.11 Explicitly Teach Words that Express Emotions and Feelings: Interjections

Interjections are single words that express strong emotion, like wow, yikes, or hooray. Words of greeting or departure can also be interjections, like hey, goodbye, or later.

Words that function as interjections stand independent from the grammatical structure of a sentence.

Oops! I spilled my juice.
Hello! It's great to see you!
Uh, is that what you meant to say?

We use interjections most often in informal writing and dialogue. Interjections have either a comma or an exclamation point to signal their separation from the sentence … and the level of emotional intensity: Rats!

Interjections are a bit different because they do not have a grammatical relationship to the words around them. They do not modify a word or serve as a subject or object. 

Interjections aren't required for a complete sentence. They are used to express something — surprise, pain, agreement, disgust. 

There are different types of interjections:

• Emotional: Wow!, Ouch!, Ugh!
• Attention-getters: hey, psst
• Conversation fillers: um, uh
• Social conventions: hello, goodbye, thanks

While these words are most natural and frequent in oral language, they often appear in dialogue or to grab the reader's attention. 

Before you teach this model lesson, you'll need a picture of a surprised child. We've provided you this example to print or post on your whiteboard.

Interjections are best to practice with in authentic text, but here is an I Do you may teach to introduce this grammatical building block.

Say,

The function, or job, of some words is to express strong feelings. Sometimes the feeling is surprise. Maybe something hurt. We use a strong single word to express the feeling. You use these types of words a lot when you're talking. Words like wow, ouch, and yay all show emotion. 

Look at this picture.

What do you think this kid might be saying?

Students respond,

Wow! Ouch!

Say,

Think about a time when we might use these words.

We might say, "Wow!" if we saw a rainbow across the sky.
We might say, "Ouch!" if we stubbed our toe.

Words that have the job of expressing emotion are called interjections. They are words that show how you feel right in the moment. They're fun to use!

Think about this next part as the We Do section of your lesson. 

Write this sentence on the board:

Gross! My shoes are all muddy.

Um, did you forget your water bottle?

Hi! I'm so glad you could come!

Let's look at some sentences and see if you can pick out the interjections. Let's read this first one together:

You all read,

Gross! My shoes are all muddy.

Say,

What word is the interjection?

Students say,

Gross!

Say,

That's right! And do you notice it has an exclamation point? When an interjection is a very strong feeling, you use an exclamation point after it.

When the feeling's not so strong, you can use a comma.

Write this sentence on the board:

Um, did you forget your water bottle?

You all read,

Um, did you forget your water bottle?

Say,

What word is the interjection?

Students answer,

Um!

Say,

That's right! And it's not that strong of a feeling. It's more of what we call a filler word … um, uh, er, or hmmm. So we often put a comma after those. 

Let's read the next one together. This one is a little tricky.

Write this sentence on the board: 

Hi! I'm so glad you could come!

You all read,

Hi! I'm so glad you could come!

Say,

What word is the interjection?

Some kids guess, 

Hi?

Say,

That's right. It's hi! Polite words that we say to greet or say goodbye can be interjections, like hi, hello, good morning, what's up, later, see ya! And you'll put either a comma or an exclamation point after those kinds of interjections, depending on the feelings connected to the greeting.

So next time you're feeling excited, or frustrated, or angry and you say, "Rats!" or Hooray!" remember that you just said an interjection!