Verbs Flashcards – 100 + FREE Printables
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Get 112 free printable verb flashcards in pdf format, with words organized by phonics skill and feature, and includes past and present tenses.
Teaching Verbs
What Are Verbs? In short, verbs are action words – they tell us what something does.
Verbs are essential for building complete, coherent phrases and sentences. I describe it to my students as the “glue” of a sentence – the verb tells us what’s happening!
Think about this phrase as an example: “He soccer.” It doesn’t make much sense, does it?
Verbs complete the sentence and transform the meaning: “He plays soccer,” or, “He watches soccer,” or, “He coached soccer,” or, “He dislikes soccer.”
You see now how including a verb turned it into a fluent, complete thought, and how each verb made the sentence mean something different.
Because verbs are so essential to fluency, students need lots of explicit instruction identifying and using these action words in context.
The FREE Verb Flashcards
These flashcards are a great, FREE, multi-use resource for students from Kindergarten and up, featuring common, decodable words.
What You Get:
- 112 Action Verb Flashcards
- The words are organized by phonics skill and feature for easy differentiation.
- The cards include past and present tense words.
- Skills included: CVC words, open syllables, words with digraphs and blends, VCe words, R-controlled vowels, and words with suffixes (-ing, -ing with doubling rule, -ed with dropping rule, -ed with doubling rule, -s).
- Verb Info Cover Card
- A kid-friendly definition of verbs for easy referencing.
- 3 contextual examples of verbs in sentences.
- Colorful, recognizable pictures.
Extension Ideas
Phonics & Decoding Practice
- Sound Sorts: Have students sort verbs by sound (short/long vowels, r-controlled, etc.).
- Word Hunts: Ask students to find verbs with a specific phonics pattern or features (ex: verbs with blends, verbs with suffix -ing or -ed).
Grammar & Syntax
- Sentence Building: Show a verb and have students generate complete sentences orally or in writing.
- Tense Practice: Display a verb. Ask students identify the tense and then challenge them to change it into past, present, or future tense.
- Subject-Verb Agreement: Pair the verb with different subjects to practice agreement (“He runs, they run”).
Writing & Vocabulary
- Verb of the Day: Spotlight one verb and brainstorm synonyms, antonyms, and sentences.
- Story Starters: Put up 3–4 verbs, and students must create a mini-story using them.
- Action Charades: Show a verb, and a student acts it out while others guess. This one can get pretty hilarious!
Extension for Advanced Students
- Morphology Practice: Break verbs into base + suffix (jump + ing, hope + ed).
- Synonym Expansion: Choose a “basic” verb (like run) and brainstorm stronger/more specific verbs (sprint, jog, dash).
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Download & Print
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➡️ Get MORE FREE Resources: Silly Sentence Building.