What Every Beginning to Intermediate Grammar Teacher Needs to Know
Teaching verbs and actions is a crucial part of any student's education. It's the basis of learning sentence structure, subject verb agreement, and so much more. And while starting off with simple present tense verbs may seem like a walk in the park, the more advanced verb forms can be a bit more tricky to teach, especially if you're an ESL instructor. With the resources below, you'll find worksheets that cover verbs, actions, and activities for beginner students to more advanced ones.
Feel free to download and share any of the following verb worksheets - they are yours to use in the classroom, as homework assignments, or for parents to give their kids as extra practice. Happy teaching!
Verbs, Actions, & Activities Worksheets -
1
Regular and Irregular Verbs
Learning the different verb forms can be a challenge for many ESL students, but utilizing simple, engaging worksheets like this once can make all the difference. Use this activity to give intermediate students practice with past tense regular and irregular verbs. In the first part of the worksheet, they will be asked to choose from a word bank and use the past form of the irregular verbs to complete the sentence. In part B, they will need to write the past form of the regular verb.
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2
Modal Verbs
For more advanced students, this activity is an excellent resource to help them learn the ins and outs of modal verbs. It comes in the form of a PowerPoint that teachers can use in their lessons to teach usage rules and provide example sentences. The beginning slides provide the types of modal verbs, like ability, possibility, permission, and request. Then, it gets into examples of each. This is a great introductory lesson to use before having students complete assignments on their own.
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3
Daily Routines/Actions Flashcards
- If you have beginner students, some of the most fun lessons are teaching daily routines and activities. Students get the chance to talk about themselves and learn about others, all while learning new and useful vocabularly that they can utilize in their everyday lives. These flashcards show basic common actions and can be used in a variety of ways, such as for memory games, practicing questions, or performing speaking activities. Students will get excited to learn the words of actions they perform every single day!
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4
Action Verbs Matching Activity
Similar to the activity above, this worksheet is catered to beginner-level students who are just becoming familiar with action verbs. The worksheet showcases illustrations of several common actvities with a word bank of terms that match the images. Students will need to write the corresponding number to match both of them together.
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5
Action Verbs Puzzle for ESL
The first lessons of an ESL student's education set the foundation for the rest of their learning experience, and basic action verbs are a part of that. To keep young learners focused, it's a great idea to utilize fun and engaging activities and worksheets to help them practice new concepts. With this ESL crossword, beginner students will look at illustrations and fill in the corresponding verb that goes along with them. Then, they will fill in the crossword puzzle with those words to complete the activity.
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6
Verb To Be Affirmative
Once you've introduced to be affirmative verbs to your beginner students, you can give them this worksheet to practice their new knowledge. It's a very simple activity with nine questions and a bank of to be verbs like am, are, and is, with their corresponding pronouns. Students will select from those verbs to fill in the blanks and complete the sentence. Then, they will match the sentence with the appropriate illustration.
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7
Simple Past (Regular Verbs)
This acvitity provides plenty of practice on the simple past form for elementary level students. There are five excercises for students to go through, starting with a word bank of simple past verbs. Learners will need to place each verb in the appropriate column according to orthographical rules. Then, students will convert present tense verbs to simple past, followed by a fill in the blanks activity. To wrap up, there is an exercise that asks students to write the negative form of each sentence, as well as one that has them form the yes/no question from each sentence.
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8
Cooking Verbs
As students start to learn new vocabularly, it's always fun to focus on a specific niche that they will have lots to talk about. This activity introduces cooking-related verbs such as slice, melt, grate, and grill. They will be provided with a wordbank of verbs to choose from and match with illustrations of the action. Once students finish the activity, you can even lead into a conversation activity by asking them what kind of food they like to eat/make. If they are old enough, ask them to describe how they prepare it. If not, they can do their best to describe what their parents do using some of the words from the worksheet.
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9
It's always fun to see kids light up when you introduce a topic that they know all about. With this worksheet, you'll teach students the vocabularly behind everday activities, so there's something everyone can relate to. They will start off by watching a quick animated video, and then they will answer some follow-up questions and complete a grammar and vocabularly activity.
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10
Table of Verbs
- If you're an ESL teacher, you need to bookmark this table. It's the ultimate list of verbs with the infinitive, past, and past participle forms of each. It was originally created for students who speak Korean as a first language, but it can be utilized for anyone learning the English language (simply cross out or ignore the column with Korean translations). Teachers can pass out the resource for students to use for writing and speaking activities, or you can send it home with them for extra practice.
We hope you found a helpful resource or two on this list that you can use in your classroom! For more help with teaching verbs and actions, check out the article How To Teach the Verb "To Be" to Beginners.
