Learn about Active Verbs

This set of active verb charade cards has been created by a teacher as a fun 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.

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

Use this active game to consolidate students’ understanding of action verbs. It works great as a whole class activity or as a writing center activity. Place the cards face down in a pile. Students select the top card and act out the verb shown.

How to Use this Resource

You’ll need to decide if you will conduct this as a whole group or small group activity. Print and cut out the Verb Charades Task Cards (one set for a whole group activity, or one set for every four – five students in your class). 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 emphasize 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 GROUP 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.

EXTENSION ACTIVITY

Have students use the blank cards at the end of this document to create their own action verb card.

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.

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