03: Verbs

This is Lesson #3 of a unit of 10.

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Teacher Slide

Objective: grammar

To understand what verbs are, how they are formed, and their grammatical characteristics.

Objective: writing

To explore what role verbs play in writing, and to apply this to the pupils' own writing.

Terminology for pupils:

verb, tense, present tense, past tense

What actions can you see here?

We can talk about all of these actions by using verbs. For example, to describe what is happening in the picture you can use the verbs jump and eat. Can we use any other verbs here?

We can use different verbs to mean the same thing. For example:

• We could choose to say walk, stroll or plod. What’s the difference between these verbs?
• We could choose to say eat, gobble or munch. What's the difference between these verbs?

Can you think of verbs that could replace:

• sleep?
• think?
• drink?

Discuss these questions with a partner:

• What other verbs can you think of?
• Is cat a verb? How do you know?
• How do we know when a word is a verb?

Verbs:

• Tell us about actions (He washed his hair.), thoughts (She wondered about it.) and states (She likes football.).
• Tell us when something takes place:

We can talk about things happening right now (She walks to school every day.)

We can talk about things that happened in the past (She walked to school.).

Identify the verb in each of the following examples by clicking on them.

Answers

Now let's see how verbs can change the meaning of sentences. Take a look at this sentence: The girl made a snowman.

We could change it to:

• The girl created a snowman.
• The girl drew a snowman.
• The girl imagined a snowman.

How do these sentences differ in meaning? What does the verb tell us about the girl? What is she doing?

Change the verb in the following sentences, and discuss with a partner how your new verbs have changed the meaning of the sentences:

• The boy walked to school.
• I like the summer holidays.
• Everyone in the class ate an apple.

Looking at the picture below, write a short story which uses verbs.

The teacher asks the pupils to think of three things they have learnt about verbs. Pupils think to themselves, share with each other and then the class.