Whitt
1
Goal: Students will correctly identify and classify action verbs and linking verbs in a given
sentence.
Target Audience: A group of 10 6th grade (regular) language arts students at a private school in
Brandon, Fl. Students will be completing units on the parts of speech as part of their existing
course work and will already be familiar with nouns and subjects of a sentence
Terminal Objective: Given a simple sentence the learner will identify the verbs in a sentence and
classify as action or linking
Introductory Activities
a.
Motivation:
Present a paragraph to the class with the verbs missing from the paragraph. Inform students
that their challenge at the end of the lesson will be able to correctly fill in the verbs using
both action and linking verbs. Any sort of challenge or game that can be played in learning
is highly motivational to students in middle school. Additionally, during the student
interview that was conducted prior to the design report completion, students indicated that
they would rather complete assignments that use games and challenges vs traditional
assignments.
b.
Objectives:
Inform students that the goal of the lesson is to be able to identify and classify linking and
action verbs within a sentence.
c.
Prerequisite skills:
Remind students what we have learned regarding subjects of a sentence and how nouns are
used within a sentence. Review a couple of examples of finding subjects in a sentence.
Objective 1: Given a set of verbs the learner will identify if the verb is a “being” verb (Linking) or a
“doing” verb (Action)
a. Inform Learners of Objective:
Inform students that they will be learning the difference between a linking verb and an action
verb.
b. Present information and examples:
1. Begin by describing using printed notes that an action verb is one where the subject is doing
something in the sentence, such as jump, stand, fly, or sit.
2. Ask students to come up with other examples of action verbs and provide feedback
3. Describe using printed notes that the other set of verbs used are linking verbs or being
verbs. Inform students using printed notes that these verbs are those that show that the
subject is something, such as Sally is pretty. We are a large group.
c. Present Practice:
Give students a list of verbs in printed form and ask them to identify them as action or linking
d. Present Feedback:
Review answers with students and explain why they are correct in printed form
Whitt
2
Terminal Objective: Given a simple sentence the learner will identify the verbs in a sentence and
classify as action or linking
a. Inform Learners of Objective:
Inform students that they will be learning to identify the verbs in a sentence before classifying
them as linking or action
b. Present information and examples: all information is presented to students using a printed
packet
1. Begin by presenting a sentence to the students.
2. Remind students how to identify the nouns in the sentence
3. Demonstrate how to ask if the noun is doing something. If the noun is doing something,
such as Sally jumped high, to underline what the noun is doing (jumped)
4. Inform students to label this as an action verb
5. Inform student that if the noun is not doing something to see if there is a linking verb in the
sentence or to ask if the noun is being something, such as Sally is tall, and to underline the
linking verb (is) and label it as a linking verb
c. Present Practice:
Give students a group of sentences and ask them to identify and classify the action and linking
verbs by first finding the subjects (nouns) in the sentence
d. Present Feedback:
Review answers with students and explain why they are correct
Concluding Activities
a. Learner practice and feedback on the terminal objective
For homework practice, students will be given a worksheet of 20 sentences and be asked to
identify and classify the linking and action verbs by first finding the subjects (nouns). During the
next class, we will review answers with explanation.
b. Transfer:
By learning this information students will be able to understand future grammar lessons which
fall into the writing framework. The instructor will reinforce transfer by reviewing lessons on
verbs with each subsequent grammar lesson- similar to how nouns were reviewed prior to
learning about locating verbs.
c. Conclusion:
Lesson will conclude with going back to the motivation paragraph and have students fill in the
blank with appropriate linking and action verbs.