How to Teach Kids Action Verbs

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"Jump" is an action verb. A verb is a part of speech that expresses an action or a state of being of the subject of a sentence. The simplest types of verbs to learn are action verbs because they clearly indicate something that is done. The idea of learning about action verbs usually isn't appealing to many kids. However, you can make the process much more interesting by catering to various learning styles, such as visual, auditory and tactile learning.

1 Ask the kids to name some things that they enjoy doing. As they do so, write the action verbs from their responses on the board. Examples might include verbs such as "play," "dance," "sing," "color" and "paint."

2 Tell the class that these words are called "action verbs" because that these words illustrate various types of actions or things that you can do.

3 Instruct your students to write down five action verbs on a sheet of paper. Invite the students to come to the front of the class one at a time and act out one word from their list to see if their classmates can guess the action verb.

4 Give your students a work sheet in which they must circle action verbs out of choices of other types of verbs and words. For instance, one example might read, "run," "be" "dog." The students would have to pick out "run" as the action verb.

5 Read a story to the kids and instruct them to give some sort of signal whenever they hear an action verb. For instance, you might tell them to clap their hands twice when they hear an action verb.

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Definition of Transitive Verbs

Transitivity is a grammatical concept that may seem confusing at first glance. Once you understand the basic test for a transitive verb, the concept is really quite simple. Understanding grammatical ideas like verb transitivity can help you read and write more effectively in your everyday life.
The term "transitivity" in grammar refers to how many objects a verb must take in a given context to be meaningful. Some verbs can be both transitive and intransitive, depending on context. For example, "The chef cracked" is not a meaningful sentence, because the verb does not have an object. However, both "The plate cracked," and "The chef cracked the plate" are meaningful, grammatically correct sentences.
A verb is called intransitive if it can stand alone without a direct object. Some examples of common intransitive verbs are "fall," "laugh," "sleep" and "happen." These verbs are always intransitive, because they cannot appear with a direct object. Some verbs change transitivity depending on context. As in the above example, "The plate cracked" uses an intransitive form of the verb "cracked," since it does not require an object to be meaningful.
A transitive verb requires a direct object to be grammatically correct. Some common transitive verbs are "want," "fear," "use" and "hit." These verbs nearly always require an object when they are used in a sentence.
The easiest way to check the transitivity of a verb in a particular sentence is to ask, "Verb what?" For example, upon reading "The chef cracked the plate," you could ask "Cracked what?" The answer would be "the plate." If you can answer the question, "Verb what?" then the verb is transitive. Consider, "The plate cracked." Cracked what? There is no answer, so "cracked" in this context is intransitive.
Be careful: for a verb to be called transitive, it must have a direct object. An indirect object, such as the object of a prepositional phrase, does not make a verb transitive. For example, "Sally comes to the library." The library may seem to be the object of the verb at first glance. However, there is no answer to the question "Comes what?" so the verb cannot be transitive.
It is possible for verbs to take both direct and indirect objects; these verbs are called ditransitive. For example, the verb "give." "Sally gives Jim the book." "Book" is the direct object, and answers the question "Gives what?" Jim is the indirect object, since it is the object of the implied preposition "to." If a verb has a direct object, then it is transitive regardless of whether or not an indirect object is present.

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Jul 8, Main Verbs, Auxiliary Verbs (Helping Verbs) and Compound Verbs

English sentences can have main verbs, auxiliary verbs (also called helping verbs) and compound verbs.

Let's go over each group.

Auxiliary verbs are verbs that are used together with another verb (called the main verb of the sentence) to express the action or state.

Main verb + auxiliary verb = complete idea

The most common auxiliary verbs are:
be, am, is, are, was, were, do, did, have, has, had.

Are singing

The main verb is "singing."
The auxiliary verb is "are."

Example sentences (the auxiliary verb is bold, and the main verb is underlined):
They are jogging. She was sitting. We were waiting for hours. Is she sleeping? He didn't know the answer. We have gone a long way. Has she received any of my letters? Do you smoke? Will she help?A compound verb = auxiliary verb + main verb.

Examples:
was playing, has eaten, doesn't want.

She will fall.

"Will fall" is a compound verb.

Example sentences:
They were discussing their future.He didn't tell us the truth.I have finished my homework.She will meet us there.