Verbs Teaching Resources
Explain verbs to your primary students with printable worksheets, digital activities, English games and more from the teachers of Teach Starter.
This collection of teaching resources is aligned to the Australian Curriculum and was designed by teachers to help you help your students learn how to identify and use this part of speech correctly, including action verbs, helping verbs, linking verbs and the different verb tenses.
Each resource in this collection was carefully curated by our expert teacher team to ensure it's classroom-ready, saving you time on your lesson plans!
New to teaching this part of the English 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 be used to 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 primary school and beyond.
Looking for a few ways to make this fun and engaging? This teaching resource collection is chock full of fun reading rotation 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 they've learned and have your students guess them. 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 year 1 students 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 HASS. 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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Year 3 and Year 4 English Worksheets - Christmas Printables
Add some Christmas spirit to your December grammar lessons with a printable pack of Christmas-themed Year 3 and Year 4 English worksheets.
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Glorious Grammar Volume 1 - Worksheet Book
50 activities in one booklet which all revolve around learning grammar in the classroom.
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Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives Cut and Paste Worksheet
Have some fun identifying parts of speech by sorting school-themed nouns, verbs, and adjectives with a cut-and-paste worksheet.
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Christmas Task Cards - Past, Present and Future Tense Practise
Practice identifying past, present, and future tense verbs with a set of Christmas Verb Tense Task Cards!
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Glorious Grammar (Early Years) Volume 1 – Worksheet Book
A workbook packed with 50 grammar activities for younger years.
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Nouns, Proper Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs and Conjunctions Posters
Enhance student understanding of the 8 parts of speech with these colourful, informative and easily-referenced grammar wall posters.
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Christmas Printables - Parts of Speech Cut and Paste Activities
Bring a bit of Christmas fun into your parts of speech lessons with printable Christmas worksheets
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Identifying Descriptive Language Worksheets - Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs and Adverbs
A set of 5 worksheets to help your students identify descriptive language in narrative texts.
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Colour by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs - Frog
Consolidate your parts of speech lesson by colouring nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs on the frog.
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Vivid Verbs Poster Pack
Teach your students to omit boring, overused verbs from their writing with a classroom set of vivid verb posters.
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Colour by Parts of Speech Chameleon Worksheet (Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Conjunctions and Pronouns)
Practise your parts of speech lesson by colouring nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and pronouns on the chameleon.
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Parts of Speech Colouring Worksheet (Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs)
Use this colour by part of speech worksheet as a fun Autumn activity with your students.
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Adverbs Activity : Grammar Charades
Have some fun and build grammar skills with an adverb charades activity.
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Simple Present and Past Tense Match-Up Cards (Regular Verbs)
A set of 30 match-up cards to help students learn about simple present tense and simple past tense of regular verbs.
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Exploring Verb Tenses - Interactive Activity
Provide your students with a digital learning activity to practise using past, present, and future tense verbs.
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Vocabulary Building Template – Verbs
Expand verb vocabulary with this open-ended task.
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Colour by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs & Adjectives - Seal
Review parts of speech by colouring nouns, verbs and adjectives on the seal.
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Colour by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs & Adjectives - Octopus
Practise using parts of speech by colouring nouns, verbs and adjectives on the octopus.
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Action, Saying, Thinking and Relating Verb Poster
A poster giving the definition and examples of action, saying, thinking and relating verbs.
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Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives Flashcards
A set of 60 flashcards covering nouns, verbs and adjectives as well as 3 colourful sorting pockets to create a colourful display.
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Grammar Worksheet Pack – Lower Primary
A 13 page worksheet pack to consolidate the learning of different grammar concepts in the early years.
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Parts of Speech Word Search (Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs and Adverbs) – Worksheet
A word search where students find and categorise nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.
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Past Tense, Present Tense and Future Tense Posters
A set of four posters providing simple descriptions and examples of past, present and future tense.
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Parts of Speech Word Cards Sorting Activity
Engage your students with this parts of speech group activity where they sort 112 word cards into categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, coordinating conjunctions or prepositions).
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Grammar TVs
Grammar presented on TVs.
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Parts of Speech - Colour by Code Mystery Picture Worksheet
Follow the colour-coded parts of speech guide to fill in the word grid and reveal a mystery image.
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Past, Present and Future Tense Verbs – Interactive 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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Verb Charades Active Game
An active game that allows students to consolidate their understanding of action verbs.
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Creature Creator - Verb Tense Task Cards
Create a mystery creature using past, present and future tense verbs.
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Irregular Past Tense Verbs Worksheet
A worksheet that helps students identify irregular verbs.
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Comical Chronicle Worksheets - Year 6
A set of 9 ad-lib style stories for students to complete.
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Colour by Parts of Speech - Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Pronouns, Prepositions and Adverbs - Toucan
Consolidate your parts of speech lesson by colouring nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions and adverbs on the toucan.