How to teach verbs?

Learning about verbs throughout elementary school is fun for students who play verb games in class. Teachers use these games to introduce new grammar concepts as well as strengthen old concepts that students have about verbs:  what they are, how they work in a sentence, and other grammatical elements of this part of speech.

Activities

FOR EXAMPLE:SWAT

One of the most popular verb games for kids learning about grammar is called SWAT, and you can play this game with verbs very easily. You need a blackboard, chalk, and two fly swatters. Before the game begins, brainstorm as many sentences as you have students so that everyone in the classroom will play twice. Break the room up into two teams. Make three big boxes (about 2’x2’) and inside of them, write “helping,” “action,” and “linking,” which are the three kinds of verbs. Designate one student from each team to be a team secretary, tallying up the points their teammates earn. For each turn of SWAT, have two students (one from each team) come up to the board. Have them each hold a fly swatter in hand. Then, read aloud one of your sentences. Their job is to swat at the correct box as soon as possible, identifying correctly whether the verb is a helping, action, or linking verb. Make sure to finally reveal the right answer and confirm who (if anyone) earns a point from the turn. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins. 

GUESS THE ACTIONThe game plays like a simple version of charades where a student receives a secret word and tries to act it out to the other members of the team. Before you start you'll need to make small pieces of paper with a range of secret verbs written on them. Split the class into teams and ask a student to choose easy, medium or hard. Give them around 20 seconds to act out the word in front of their group (while other teams stay quiet). Continue the process with the other teams while keeping track of the scores and see who wins!You might like to let other teams guess the word if the original team are unsuccessful in their 20 seconds, giving them the chance to earn extra points.

There are many activitiesTo teach verbs:

• Verb Connection• Catch• Classroom Tennis• Things we do• Visual Verbs