The following 1 hour lesson focuses on action verbs, such as dive, kick, ride. Students will review the words through brainstorming followed by a game of charades. Then they will create sentences using the words. Finally, they will have a partner discussion about the words. It requires minimal preparation and printing.

Printable Worksheets:

Action Verbs Lesson

Teacher Directions:

1. Before class, print or write out the following words on slips of paper and put them in a jar. Cut out some blank slips of paper and put them aside. The students will be using them later.

1. Put these three words on the board. Ask students what these three words have in common. (2 min)
   • Swim
   • Eat
   • Cry
2. Hopefully your students can tell you that all three of these words are action verbs. In partners, ask your students to write as many action verbs as they can in 90 seconds. At the end of 90 seconds, tell students to put their pencils down. Ask them how many words they managed to write. Congratulate whichever team wrote the most. (3 min)
3. Hand out 3-5 slips of paper to each of the partners. Have them write their favorite words from their list, one word per each piece of paper. Collect the pieces of paper and put them in a hat or jar. (There will probably be several slips of paper with the same verbs, but that is no problem.) (5 min)
4. Then divide the class into teams. You can decide how many teams you want and how many people per team. Then play charades. Have one person from a team come up and act out the verb on the slip of paper. Whichever team guesses correctly gets a point. Whoever has the most points wins. (10-15 min)
5. Split your class into partners again. Give three slips of paper secretly to each partner. Tell them not to show their words to their classmates. In partners, students should write three separate sentences for each of the verbs. For example, (1) I kick the soccer ball. (2) My mother loves to think about her grandchildren. (3) My brother is diving in the ocean. (7 min)
6. Next students read their sentences out loud to their classmates, but they omit the verb. For example, My brother is BLANK in the ocean. The other partners raise their hands. Whoever guesses the correct verb gets a point. If the verb needs conjugating, students can get an extra point for conjugating it correctly. Keep track of points as the partners read their sentences out loud. At the end, whoever guesses the most verbs and the most correct conjugations wins. (13 min)
7. Finally put your students into partners to answer the following discussion questions. Walk around the room offering help and feedback. (10-15 min)

With whatever time you have left, do a full class feedback. You can review any words you think the students seem to be forgetting, correct any grammar problems you heard while walking around the room, or simply answer some of the discussion questions out loud in a group.

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