Verbs in books

Appropriate Population: 

• School-age (or slightly below)
• Pre-school
• Appropriate for all 

Goal: Building a child’s ability to understand and use basic verbs that relate to things people do frequently. Examples of target words might include, Running, Walking, standing, sitting, talking. 

Steps:

1. Go through the child’s books with them. Find some books that have a storyline. (Ones with a character that has to achieve something will work well for this). Gather 4-5 Books.
2. Identify which verb you would like to focus on. Go  through pictures in the book looking for that verb. For example, finding all of the pictures where someone is  “talking” “running” or “standing”.
3. Once you have given the child a number of examples of different characters doing that verb.
4.  Ask the child questions to prompt them to identify verbs. These could be identification questions  “Which one is running?” choice questions. E.g “Is he walking or is he sleeping?” A more difficult option is to ask open questions “What is he doing?” reinforce any answer by repeating the target word multiple times, “you think he is sleeping, yes I think he is sleeping too, he is sleeping under that tree!”
5. You might like to have the child try and demonstrate that verb  themselves. “ Can you lie down? What do you look like when you are thinking?” You can also demonstrate how you would do that verb. The important thing here is to provide multiple examples of the one verb, examples can be from different books, from you, or from the child. 

Step up:

• Incorporate multiple verbs in this activity. 
• Emphasise the 4th step. You might like to include new sources such as another new book or a youtube video. Have the child identify the verb in a new example that you have not shown them previously. 

Step down:  

• Focus on just one verb at a time. 
• Emphasise the 3rd step you might like to include even more examples of the one verb, you could do this by looking at pictures online or at youtube videos. Compare all of the examples and talk about them.

Resources:

• Books that the child owns.