Verbs photo shoot

Appropriate Population: 

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

Goal: Building a child’s ability to understand and use early verbs. Examples of target words might include, Running, Walking, standing, sitting, talking, singing, laughing. 

Steps:

1. Identify target verbs.  In order to encourage the child to use a verb, it is best to focus on verbs that the child understands but hasn’t yet used.
2. After you decide which verbs you want to focus on, take turns taking photos of yourself and your child doing each verb.  You could use a photo-booth or self-timer to do this, or you can take turns being the photographer.
3. As you do this, you want to repeat the verb several times. For example, when you jump, you say “jump!” 
4. After you have taken all the photos, review them together. Talk about the verbs that appear in each picture. 
5. Discuss the pictures with the child. “I’m trying to find a picture where you are walking? Where is it?” Ask the child about different pictures prompting them to use the verb. Try to avoid asking “testing questions” (Questions that you clearly  know the answer to) . “What one is your favourite doing word?” “What doing word are you best at?” “What doing word is the silliest?”  use this conversation to repeat repeat repeat the verbs. 

Step up:

• Incorporate multiple verbs in this activity. 
• Emphasise the 5th step. See if you can prompt the child to talk about verbs within a longer sentence structure, you can also incorporate other concepts such as emotions. For example: “Which ones of these have you done today?”. “Which of these do you do when you are happy?”

Step down:  

• Focus on just one verb at a time. 
• Emphasise the 3rd step. You can repeat it many times. E.G when I say jump you jump, when I am quiet we stay still. You can take a video and watch it if photos are becoming too repetitive. 

Resources:

• Camera on a laptop or phone.