Powerful Systematic and Explicit Instruction on Using Action Verbs in Complete Sentences

What is an action verb?

An action verb is a word that tells what a noun is doing. We know a word is an action verb if we can act it out. Verbs have different forms based on when the action is happening and how many nouns are doing the action. We are not addressing these differences in this lesson. All of your action verbs in this lesson will be present tense and plural because this is the easiest spelling of the action verbs. If students suggest different forms of action verbs, simply restate the action verb in the plural and present tense forms. For example, playing becomes play.

You can play a version of Simon Says to help your students understand action verbs. Say an action verb that your students must act out.

Here is a video to help your students understand action verbs. In the video, he uses singular action verbs. If your students notice, you can explain that we add -s to most action verbs when only one person or thing is doing the action. If they don’t ask, we will address singular and plural action verbs in a future lesson.

Example Sentences

After you introduce action verbs to your students, show them some example sentences so that they can see how we can use action verbs in sentences. Point out the capitalized first letter, spacing between words, and ending punctuation. Speaking of ending punctuation. I recommend sticking with periods until you can give a lesson on the other types of ending punctuation.

This should be a quick part of the lesson. You can ask students what they notice, but quickly point out the important parts of the sentence. In this case, you would want students to notice that the action verb is telling what the noun is doing. You may also want to point out that all of the nouns describe groups of people, not one person. You can explain that this is because we use different forms of action verbs to tell if one person (animal, thing, etc…) is doing the action or more than one person is doing the action.

Action Verb Pictures

You can show these five pictures to your students to help them brainstorm a list of action verbs. Give students about thirty seconds to think about each picture. Then, have them share the action verbs they see or think of with a partner. Finally, collect three to five action verbs per picture to record in a class anchor chart.

Printable Resources

These ideas will get you started teaching your action verbs lesson, but we have printable resources that will make a huge difference. Luckily, my team at For the Love has you covered! You can get all of these resources to make planning and teaching a breeze!

Word List: A list of words for the lesson for when your mind goes blank while brainstorming.

Word Chart: A tool for students to organize words they will use to write sentences. Students record words from brainstorming on their word charts, so when they write sentences, they can focus their attention on the mechanics and syntax of the sentence instead of coming up with new ideas. Word charts are the perfect place to integrate social studies and science lessons into writing.

Example Sentences: A list of example sentences that fit the purpose of the lesson. You can use these to build anchor charts, differentiate instruction or practice for students, or clarify your own understanding of the topic.

Sentence Practice: Students will use the words from their word charts to write complete sentences. The sentence practice pages have more suggestion words as well as reminders about the mechanics of a complete sentence. Students who do not need the support of the handwriting lines can write on a piece of notebook paper, or you can give them the alternate writing paper. It does not have the specific lesson information on it.

You can get the lesson on action verbs at Teachers Pay Teachers.

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