Teaching Verbs

[dancingmama]

I need to find a way to teach verbs to my 11yo.  He is still struggling to figure out what an action verb is, as well as a helping and linking verb.  We have done worksheets, we have acted them out (for action verbs), we have talked about them for years but it's not sinking in.  Need something creative and preferably hands-on or online or an iPad app.  Or something!  

 

Thanks for the help!

 

edited to add: he knows "what" the are as in he can give you the definition but can't identify them in a sentence consistenly.  

[umsami]

There's an iPad app for Grammaropolis…not sure how much it gets into identifying verbs, though as we just found it.  My kids love the songs though.

 

 

 

 

Might want to check it out and see if it can be of any help.

 

Also…does he study any foreign languages? I know learning French and Latin helped me with English grammar when I was a kid. 

[MomatHWTK]

Schoolhouse Rock and Grammaropolis.  :-)

 

 

[boscopup]

I found that the best way for my oldest to apply grammar like that was to get real sentences from literature and work through them together. KISS Grammar (scroll down to Level 1, 6th grade, and get the doc file and the AK file) is what we used, and it was eye opening!

 

So I'd combine something like that with the other suggestions mentioned above. I think a lot of traditional grammar programs give such canned sentences that the kids don't really learn how to find the part of speech, but instead learn that the part of speech is in a particular spot in the sentence. Then they're presented with a real sentence, and they have no idea what to do!

[dancingmama]

He does not study a foreign language.  

 

He will like that video.  We know the Schoolhouse rock by heart practically.  I'll check out grammaropolis. 

 

I'll go through the KISS Grammar book.  More practice is always good.

 

Thank you for the ideas.

 

Anyone have any other suggestions?

[Momling]

This might be an unpopular opinion, but here it is anyway: I would consider letting it go.

 

Stative verbs aren't the only type of verb that a person might classify. I mean, you can start looking at aspect or tense or voice or mood or valency and getting into identifying them as transitive, intransitive, di-transitive, pseudo-transitive, or as being perfective or imperfective or progressive or get into causatives, inchoatives, ergatives,... You get the picture.

 

Identifying linguistic classifications of verbs can be a bit interesting, but it's a huge topic and not in any way the sign of an educated person. The identification-of-stative-and-dynamic-verbs-in-English isn't a hill I would care to die on. It's nice to have a taste of syntax, but making sure your child can use standard English well in their writing is really where it's at!

[redsquirrel]

What grammar program have you been using? Because I would suggest FLL 3.

[dancingmama]

I've been using FLL but not 3.  2 maybe?  Perhaps I need to go ahead and get 3 and see if that helps.  Thanks.  

[redsquirrel]

If you have done FLL 2, then moving on to FLL 3 would be a good next step.