Verbs: Linking Verbs

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

Have you ever played "Red Rover"?

It’s a game that is played by two groups of children. Each group stands side-by-side and joins hands. When it is your group's turn, you say, “Red Rover, Red Rover, we dare (someone’s name) to come over.” That person has to try to break through the other group's chain of arms. If they do, they get to take one player with them to their side. If they do not break the chain, they have to stay with the team who dared them. Now, if you are a smart team, you dare a weak player over so you can make your team larger. If you are the person who is being dared over, you want to break through where you feel the weakest link is. The winner is the team that has the most members when it is time to quit.

Well, that was exhausting! How does it apply to writing?

Before continuing, if you missed or would like to review the previous Related Lesson in our Verbs series on action verbs, go to the right-hand sidebar.

A linking verb is a word that connects (links) a subject to a noun or an adjective in the predicate. The predicate is the part of the sentence that tells what the subject does or is. Some of the common linking verbs are, "be," "is," "are," "was," "were," "am," "been," and "being." These words are the forms of the verb "be."

Take out a piece of paper and pencil. As you watch the video clip, Linking Verbs, by HNJHEnglish7 (ends at 3:38), write the definition of linking verb. Then, pause the video where the instructor suggests and write down the linking verbs list:

• Were you able to write the list of linking verbs on your paper?

You should have written down the “forms of be” linking verbs and some other linking verbs, such as, "appear," "become," "feel," "grow," "look," "smell," and so on.

Math word problems sometimes use the word “is.” For example, “The sum of red apples and green apples is twenty.” When you are working on math word problems, you have learned that the word “is” means to write down an equal sign. Linking verbs work in much the same way: “is” or other linking verbs mean “equals.” So, “She is brave” means “she = brave.”

Remember the list you wrote down can help you to find linking verbs.

Continue to the Got It! section to practice finding linking verbs.