What Are Active Verbs?

Active verbs express a clear and direct action performed by the subject. For example:

• Active: The dog chased the ball.
• Passive: The ball was chased by the dog

This set of active verb charade cards has been created by a teacher as a fun and active way to learn more about active verbs. By teaching your students about active verbs, they’ll be able to make their writing more engaging and direct.

How to Play Verb Charades

You’ll need to decide if you will conduct this as a whole group or small group activity. Print and cut out the cards (one set for a whole group activity, or one set for every small group). It is recommended that you print these out on thick card. You might choose to laminate the cards for future use.

Model for students how to play by drawing a card, demonstrating the action, and allowing students to guess the action. Be sure to emphasise that no talking is allowed.

For small group charades:

• Divide students into groups of four to five students.
• Give group members a number one through four (or five).
• Have all students assigned as number one place the cards face down.
• The first player will draw the top card and perform the action without speaking.
• Player one can call on his/her peers until someone guesses the correct action verb.
• Repeat this procedure for all players until all the cards have been played.

For whole class charades:

• Call students up one at a time and hand the student a card.
• Have him or her act out the action verb without speaking.
• Call on students to guess the action.
• Once the action has been correctly named, call on another student.
• Repeat this process until all cards are used.

Download and Play Today!

Use the dropdown menu to choose between the editable Google Slide version or the easy to print PDF version of this resource.

More Verb Activities for Your English Lessons

Looking for more resources to use in the classroom? We have you covered…

[resource:5095634] [resource:710688] [resource:5111052]