Unique English Game Ideas to Practice Verbs

Today, I am thrilled to share with you a guest blog post from Catherine Ross!  She is a firm believer in making learning fun just like me!  Thanks for being a guest blogger for me Catherine.

Unique English Game Ideas to Practice Verbs

What can be the best way to practice verb related exercises such as subject-verb agreement and irregular verbs with children, besides regular worksheets? While the online space is filled with a plethora of educational English games, there are a number of ideas in the offline space as well that teachers and homeschooling parents can explore in the classroom with their students! Here are a few offline English games that will help kids practice subject-verb agreement, language speaking skills, and irregular verbs in a fun way, in the classroom, with friends, at a party, or just about anywhere!

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Sing Song

There are quite a few song lyrics websites that don’t require users to unnecessarily go through the hassle of a mandatory registration process to download lyrics. Look up such websites and download lyrics of a few children-friendly songs from their collection of millions for the kids. If you believe in preserving natural resources and avoiding unnecessary usage of paper, write down the lyrics of the songs. Choose a song that that has several instances of subject-verb disagreement and discuss them with your child. Find out possible reasons why the writer may have used improper grammar in the songs, fix the errors, read and reread to check if they still rhyme, and so on. This is a great subject-verb agreement game that the kids will enjoy!

Current Affairs

Make a great English game out of a general knowledge exercise. Choose a current event from a website or an e-paper and discuss it in the class. When you are sure the students understand the event and the circumstances leading to it, download another news article on the same event from a different website or e-paper and edit it to delete the verbs in each sentence. Not only will children be required to find suitable words to fill in the blanks, but will have to align them to the nouns as well, therefore making it a great classroom activity.

Storytelling

Oral storytelling is a great way to practice irregular verbs with children. Besides, speaking in front of one’s whole class is an excellent activity to boost children’s confidence and public speaking skills too. Topics pertaining to real life events, future plans, interesting festivals, and vacations can encourage great conversations among all age groups. And, impromptu speeches and lectures will inevitably have many instances of irregular verbs helping children to learn and practice them!

Once done with storytelling, you can choose to weave a chain-story in the class. Being the class teacher, you will have to initiate a conversation with any interesting line, such as “Suddenly, I heard a thud from my bedroom…” Students will have to continue the story by adding sentences that contain irregular verbs in past tense, such as “I ran to see what happened”, and carry the story forward. Continue till all the students have had a chance to say a line each.

Verb Bingo

Create a 5x5 grid on cardstock and fill up each box with an irregular verb. Make a grid for each student and distribute them. Coordinating with the words on the grids, create chits of the present tense verbs of all the verbs on the grids. You will call out the present tense of an irregular verb, and students will mark the past tense if they have it on their grid. The first student to get a ‘quick five (five in a row)’ or a full house wins the game.

I have used these English games in the classroom and they’ve proved to be a great success! Hope these English games help you as well!

Author Bio:

Catherine Ross is a full-time stay-at-home-mum who believes learning should be enjoyable for young minds. An erstwhile elementary school teacher, Catherine loves coming up with creative ways through which kids can grasp the seemingly difficult concepts of learning easily. She believes that a ‘fun factor’ can go a long way in enhancing kids’ understanding and blogs at http://kidslearninggames.weebly.com/

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