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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:

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Review answers with students and explain why they are correct in printed
form

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.

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