Teaching About The Function of a Verb
Submitted by: J.I.
After my students have a THOROUGH UNDERSTANDING of a noun's and of a pronoun's FUNCTION, I teach about the FUNCTION of a verb as follows:
I STRONGLY address my students as verbs. Following that, I ask them WHY I said they are verbs. After fielding a few responses I tell them they are verbs because they TALK, and every time thy TALK they FUNCTION as a verb. Next, I ask why their talking enables them to FUNCTION as a verb. Again, after listening to a few responses I ask them to tell what they talk about WHENEVER they speak, and each of their responses is written on the chalkboard. They are then shown that each of their responses falls under one of the following categories: person, place, thing, or idea. That leads into the fact that WHENEVER they TALK they TALK about a person, place, thing, or idea. After they UNDERSTAND that concept, using either the chalkboard or an overhead projector, I use examples of various statements that are volunteered by the students to exemplify how a verb "says" what a noun or a pronoun (do)es, did, will do, is, are was, will be, has, have, had, or will have.
This lesson, as is true of most of my lessons, is taught in an inductive manner; therefore, the students are able to gain a better UNDERSTANDING of what is taught rather than MEMORIZING rules and not UNDERSTANDING the function of the lesson.
P.S. Does anyone has any suggestions about teaching students how to write responses to OPEN-ended questions?