Verbs Teaching Resources
Explain verbs to your elementary students with printable worksheets, digital activities, ELA games, and more from the teachers of Teach Starter.
Teachers designed this collection of teaching resources to help you help your students learn how to identify and use this part of speech correctly, including activities to learn action verbs, helping verbs, linking verbs and verb tenses.
With editable curriculum-aligned resources, you'll be able to meet Common Core and state standards while also differentiating instruction for the individual students in your classroom.
New to teaching this part of the English Language Arts curriculum or just looking for new ways to engage students as they learn about verbs? Take a peek at this primer from our teacher team!
What Is a Verb? A Kid-Friendly Definition
We know it's a bit obvious, but knowing the definition of this part of speech is only part of the battle. You'll also need to explain verbs to your students!
Try this verb definition for kids in your classroom:
Verbs are words that describe actions or states of being. They can describe what a person, animal or thing is doing or what they did.
For example, "run," "jump," "sing" and "sleep" are all verbs.
What Are Verb Tenses?
Different verbs can be used to indicate the time when an action occurred. They do this by something called tense. Verb tense refers to when the action or state of being expressed by a verb takes place.
In the English language, there are three main verb tenses — the past, the present and the future.
Past Tense
The past tense refers to actions or events that have already happened.
Past tense verbs are created by adding "-ed" to the base form of regular verbs or by using the unique form of irregular verbs.
For example, "walk" becomes "walked" in the past tense, while "go" becomes "went."
Present Tense
The term present tense refers to actions or events that are happening now or that happen regularly. It is the base form of the verb, without any additional endings or changes.
For example, "walk" is the present tense form of the verb, as in "I walk to school every day."
Types of Verbs
Now that we have the meaning and tenses covered, what about all the types of verbs that our students encounter as they read in the classroom and (hopefully!) at home? There are six main types of verbs likely to come up in your classroom at some point:
Action Verbs
Action verbs are verbs that show an action or a movement. Words like "run," "jump," "dance" or "sing" all fit the bill.
Action verbs can be used in present, past or future tenses.
Helping Verbs
Helping verbs help (!) to form verb phrases. They are also known as auxiliary verbs.
Examples of helping verbs that your students will regularly encounter in their reading and use in their writing include:
- am
- is
- are
- was
- were
- has
- have
- had
- do
- does
- did
- can
- could
- may
- might
- will
- would
- shall
- should
Linking Verbs
Linking verbs link the subject of a sentence to a word or phrase that describes or identifies it. These verbs do not show action, so they can be a bit tricky for students to identify.
Examples of linking verbs include:
- is
- be
- am
- was
- were
- seem
- become
Modal Verbs
Modal verbs are helping verbs that express the speaker's attitude towards the action or state of being expressed by the main verb. These are also tricky for younger writers to wrap their heads around as they express hypotheticals rather than specific actions.
Modal verb examples include words such as:
- can
- could
- may
- might
- should
- must
- shall
- will
- would
Regular Verbs
Regular verbs follow a predictable pattern when forming their past tense and past participle forms. To make them, you just add "-ed" to the base form of the verb!
For example, "walk" becomes "walked," "play" becomes "played," and "talk" becomes "talked."
Irregular Verbs
Irregular verbs are more challenging for young spellers because they don't follow the predictable pattern of adding "-ed" to form their past tense and past participle forms. They have unique forms for each tense.
Some examples of irregular verbs are:
- Eat/ate
- Go/went
- Write/write
- Catch/caught
How to Teach Verbs to Kids — Fun Verb Activities
When you first begin introducing verbs to your students, they'll learn to identify and use verbs in sentences and understand the concepts of past, present, and future tense. Students will learn more complex verb forms and tenses as they progress through elementary school and high school.
Looking for a few ways to make this fun and engaging? This teaching resource collection is chock full of fun reading center activities, engaging printables, and more ideas from our teacher team.
You might also want to try these ideas and activities:
- Action Charades — For kindergartners who are just learning about action words, action charades can be a lot of fun for the whole class. Act out words that they've learned, and have your students guess the word. It's simple, fun and engaging! You can also flip this activity on its head by having students act out the verbs themselves.
- Picture It — Provide a picture prompt, and ask your first graders to create a story about what is going on in the picture using verbs in the proper context. For students who need extra support, you can provide sentence starters.
- Show It — Make show and tell a verb activity! Have students bring special items to class to show off to their classmates, and encourage them to share details about it using verbs.
How to Teach Verb Tenses
Do your students already have the basics of this part of speech down? It's time to turn to verb tenses.
Teaching verb tenses can be a bit more complex than teaching verbs themselves, but there are a few strategies that can be effective:
- Verb Tense Stacking Block Game — Label wood blocks with action verbs and have students play a stacking tower game in small groups, carefully removing one block at a time to prevent the tower from falling. Each time they remove a block, the student will have to write down the past, future and present tense of the verb on their block.
- Verb Tense Timeline — Provide a timeline of events your class is studying in social studies, and challenge students to write sentences using verbs in different tenses to describe events that occurred in the past, are happening now, or will happen in the future. For kids who need extra support, provide visual or written cues to help them identify the different tenses.
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Christmas Printables - Parts of Speech Worksheets
Bring a bit of Christmas fun into your language arts lessons with printable Christmas parts of speech worksheets.
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Thanksgiving Worksheet - Parts of Speech Sort
Review three parts of speech by sorting nouns, verbs, and adjectives with a parts of speech sorting activity.
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Escape from Pete's Pumpkin Patch - Halloween Escape Room
Escape the evil witch who turns children into pumpkins at Pete’s Pumpkin Patch using inferencing, problem solving, and grammar skills
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Fall Parts of Speech Sort - Nouns Verbs Adjectives
Review three parts of speech by sorting nouns, verbs, and adjectives with a parts of speech sorting activity.
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Grammar TVs - Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Pronouns, Common Nouns, and More
Teach your students about nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, common nouns, and more parts of speech with a fun set of tv-themed parts of speech posters.
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Fall Worksheet - Parts of Speech Cut and Paste
Have a bit of fall fun identifying parts of speech by sorting fall-themed nouns, verbs, and adjectives with a cut and paste worksheet.
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Changing Verb Tenses Interactive Google Slides Activity
Provide your students with a digital learning environment to practice using past, present, and future tense verbs.
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Pumpkin Parts of Speech Worksheets
Review three parts of speech by sorting nouns, verbs, and adjectives with these four pumpkin-themed cut-and-paste worksheets.
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Subject-Verb Agreement Digital Learning Activity
Improve sentence structure and grammar skills with a Google Interactive resource that focuses on a range of subject-verb agreement rules.
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Singular/Plural Subject Verb Agreement Google Slides Interactive Activity
Improve sentence structure and grammar skills with a Google Interactive resource that focuses on singular and plural subject-verb agreement.
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Adverbs Activity - Grammar Charades
Have some fun and build grammar skills with an adverb charades activity.
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Color-by-Code Parts of Speech- Back to School Worksheet
Use this color by part of speech worksheet as a back to school activity with your students.
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Has/Have Subject Verb Agreement Task Cards
Practice using has and have correctly using a set of Subject-Verb agreement task cards.
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Singular/Plural Subject Verb Agreement Board Game
Improve sentence structure and grammar skills with a board game focusing on singular and plural subject-verb agreement.
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Do/Does Subject Verb Agreement Task Cards
Practice using DO and DOES correctly using a set of Subject-Verb agreement task cards.
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Subject-Verb Agreement Concentration & Go Fish Game
Improve student sentence structure with a card game focusing on usage of correct subject-verb agreement in sentences.
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Singular and Plural Subject-Verb Agreement Sort
Provide students with additional grammar practice with a sorting activity focusing on singular and plural subject-verb agreement.
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Past, Present, and Future Verb Tense Matching Activity - Irregular Verbs
Master past, present, and future tenses of irregular verbs with a butterfly matching activity.
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Past, Present, and Future Verb Tense Matching Activity - Regular Verbs
Practice using past, present, and future tenses of regular verbs with a butterfly matching activity.
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Is/Are, Was/Were Subject Verb Agreement Interactive Activity
Embed subject-verb agreement practice into digital learning with this Google Slides Interactive activity.
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Has/Have, Do/Does Subject Verb Agreement Interactive Activity
Practice building sentences using has, have, do, and does with this Google Slides Interactive subject-verb agreement activity.
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Identifying Verbs - I Have, Who Has? Card Game
Play a fun and exciting game that is great for students who are now learning how to identify action verbs.
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Past, Present, and Future Verb Tense Sentence Sort
Identify sentences written in past, present, and future tense with task cards designed for primary grades.
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Past, Present, and Future Tense Worksheets - Grades 1/2
Provide students with additional verb tense practice with worksheets focusing on changing verbs into past, present, and future tense.
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Is/Are Subject Verb Agreement Task Cards
Practice using is and are correctly using a set of Subject-Verb agreement task cards.
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Is/Are Subject Verb Agreement Worksheet
Provide students with additional subject-verb agreement practice with a worksheet focusing on using is and are correctly.
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Has/Have Subject Verb Agreement Worksheet
Provide students with additional subject-verb agreement practice with a worksheet focusing on using has and have correctly.
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Do/Does Subject Verb Agreement Worksheet
Provide students with additional subject-verb agreement practice with a worksheet focusing on using DO and DOES correctly.
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Was/Were Subject Verb Agreement Worksheet
Provide students with additional subject-verb agreement practice with a worksheet focusing on using was and were correctly
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Was/Were Subject Verb Agreement Task Cards
Practice using was and were correctly using a set of Subject-Verb agreement task cards.
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Google Slides Interactive- Past, Present, and Future Verbs Activity
Develop student skills using the correct forms of past, present, and future tense verbs with this Google Slides Interactive activity.
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Bowling Game - Parts of Speech
Practice recognizing parts of speech by matching 36 word cards to noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, and preposition pins.