Lively verbs and complementary grammatical phrases

run           drive         hopped        play          sleep         crawl
dig           build         write        jump          walk         whistle
rake         love          dressed             hop           look          call
jog           jumped              sing          swim         grow         push
played       read         move         pull          talk         eat     smiled

What is it? A collection of...yes verbs! A collection of random verbs a teacher gathered from year 4 students. Great! The students know what verbs are!
When perusing the above random collection of verbs, questions arise:   

     Where is there a pattern with these verbs (functional grammar term ‘processes’)?
     Where is the connection to writing?
     Where is the learning about various verb types?
         
But two aspects that are of interest in this ‘teaching thought’ are:                 

Where is the ‘oomph’ in the above verbs?

Can verbs be given ‘oomph’ when complementary grammatical forms (noun phrases and adverbial /prepositional phrases) are added?

...............................................................................

The same teacher who had collected the random verbs from the students, asked me how he could make his student’s writing more inspiring. He wanted his children’s daily written stories to have ‘oomph’.

Teachers of grade 3 on, may think that stories with few words should not be used with older students, but I believe  when older children are learning about the English language short pieces are excellent examples to use, A necessary requirement is that teachers select models to inspire children. Readers encounter in good picture books, big books, novels a far greater range and use of language than we ever experience in our day-to-day living. Published texts are the models that show students the techniques authors use to make meaning clear; the vocabulary and language structures that lead to creating stimulating ideas.


Adopting a constructivist approach where learners build knowledge upon the foundation of previous learning (we knew that the children know what verbs are), we began with a fun approach. The children learnt about onomatopoeic verbs - words that resemble sounds associated with actions they refer to.  

For example, the big book, Trouble in the Ark  by Gerald Rose,

It was fly who started the trouble.
He buzzed the mouse
Who squeaked at rabbit
Who squealed at rhinoceros
Who snorted at parrot
Who squawked at snake

                                  And the verbs keep tumbling on in the story.

We gave the children pictures of animals and they wrote animal names and their corresponding sounds on paper strips (this could be done on the computer).  Alligators grunt, apes gibber, donkeys he-haw, eagles scream, elephants trumpet, bears grrrr, flies bzzzz, birds chirp, bulls bellow, frogs ribbit, chickens cluck. Using these strips they then innovated on the story, ‘Trouble in the Ark’. A child’s prose writing example being,

                                It was the alligator who started being annoying,

                                He grunted at the ape

                                That then gibbered at the donkey

  That then he-hawed at the...

We found mainly humorous stories which we knew the children would enjoy, maybe some with only 3 lively verbs but nonetheless good models. So the verbs would not dart across the children’s minds and be forgotten we introduced ‘lively verb’ games and children verbalized and wrote short poems and furthermore the ‘lively verbs’ we found in books were included in the student’s spelling regime. And to widen, further, the children’s view of lively verbs the original verb list was used as a foundation to find more, similar meaning verbs in the thesaurus. The children were encouraged to include lively verbs in their narrative writing.

From the ‘oomph’ verb models of those written in Trouble in the Ark, we moved to a wonderful story which not only had onomatopoeic sound verbs but other lively verbs that resembled actions. These were complemented by noun phrases answering the question can verbs be given ‘oomph’ when complementary grammatical forms are added?

The class learnt about noun phrases, articles, adjectives and conjunctions added to the noun to give more meaning, We used the story below, (I cannot now find the author or title somebody may know it and let me know).

Summary of the beginning of the story: The old cow wouldn’t “moo”, the farmer wanted to put her in the wheelbarrow, but other animals were already in the wheelbarrow. So the old woman was shifted out of bed for cow and understandably...

the funny old woman flipped up on her head.                     (You could choose more mundane verbs and compare)
“It’s really quite cozy here”, she gulped

Then late that night the funny old man
Carted the funny old cow to town.
They rolled in the light of the bright full moon ‘til they found old Doc Brown.
The doctor thumped on the cow’s hide
he tickled her tonsils and looked inside.
“Old man,” croaked the doctor, “your cow’s not sick.
She merely wanted the ride!“
The old man cried, “Can this be true?”                                             
The cow replied with a jolly, “Moooooo.”    
(What was ideal with this model is that children saw that the author did not  always include the adjective. We discussed the need for variety.)

Later we revisited this same prose to highlight adverbial phrases and prepositional phrases. (Functional grammar descriptors ‘circumstances’,  ‘qualifiers’),

The children learnt that adverbial phrases give more information to the verb and prepositional phrases more information to the noun phrase.

Initially, it was confusing as both types of phrases link to the idea of ‘where’. However, knowing well the forms ‘verb’ and ‘noun phrases’ the children easily recognized the adverbial adding detail to the verb and the preposition adding detail to the noun phrase. For example, we not only knew that the woman was a ‘funny old woman’ who performed the action ‘flipped’ (verb) ‘up on her head’ (adverbial phrase), we discovered  where ‘the funny old cow’ (noun phrase) travelled ... ‘to town’ (a preposition followed by a noun (or noun phrase).

...the funny old woman flipped up on her head.   

“It’s really quite cozy here”, she gulped
  
Then late that night the funny old man
Carted the funny old cow to town.
They rolled in the light of the bright full moon ‘til they found old Doc Brown.
The doctor thumped on the cow’s hide
he tickled her tonsils and looked inside.
“Old man,” croaked the doctor, “your cow’s not sick.
She merely wanted the ride!“
The old man cried, “Can this be true?”                                              

The cow replied with a jolly, “Moooooo.”  

 
To reinforce the learning about lively verbs, noun phrases and adverbial phrases or prepositional phrases the children were given sets of three cards and three different coloured pens. In groups of three they made phrases and verbs and swapped cards with other groups to re-form another group’s sentence (many humorous sentences evolved). 

We moved to excerpts from novels and these were enlarged, discussed, compared with more simple expressions, written over and made into cut-up sentences to manipulate. Joint constructed (shared) writing was included and during individual conferencing the classroom teacher pointed out to writers where an adverbial phrase or propositional phrase could be inserted in their writing

Dust in my eyes (Janeen Brian)

 
This excerpt has adverbial phrases and prepositional phrases and compound verbs, (functional grammar terminology ‘verb groups’) and I will leave you to find the rest of the noun phrases. 

Jacey stared out of her bedroom window, absentmindedly flicking off the dead flies on the sill. The unrelenting dry days seemed to have sucked the life out of everything... 

 
Grabbing her hat, Jacey headed for the door.  Jacey slammed the flyscreen door of the homestead and marched across the dusty yard towards the stables.

George’s Marvellous Medicine (Roald Dahl)
This excerpt includes compound verbs and adverbial phrases. I will leave you to find the noun phrases.
 
[George] was tired of staring at pigs and hens and cows and sheep. He was especially tired of having to live in the same house as that grizzly old grunion of a Grandma.

 

Once we paid attention to lively verbs and noun phrases and adverbial/prepositional phrases they leapt out at us from all kinds of writing (including non-fiction texts). Rather than compartmentalizing ‘nouns’ and ‘adjectives’, the children seemed to remember and write with ease noun phrases.  Adverbial /prepositional phrases took a little longer for some children to apply in their writing.
 
What was rousing, gradually many of the children’s sentence structures were giving action and place images which created far more interesting stories. Also, with all the published models that we read and discussed some other writing techniques, (although not explicitly taught) were adopted by many of the children.

See what stories you can find with explicit, lively verbs, noun phrases and adverbial /prepositional phrases and let me know. I will pass a list on to readers in one of my blogs.

An aside. We begin with reception/kindergarten children writing ‘run’, ‘jump’, ‘hop’, ‘play’, ‘look’, ‘love’, ‘sing’. It is great even in those first year classes for teachers to refer to action words as verbs (processes) and of course the noun (participant). As the children mature in those early years introduce ‘noun phrases’ e.g. The small boy can run.

Brian, Janeen. 1995. Dust in my eyes. Era Publications. Adelaide South Australia.
Dahl, Roald. 1982. George’s Marvellous Medicine. Penguin Books. London.UK
Rose, Gerald. 1980.Trouble in the Ark,. Ashton Scholastic. Sydney. Australia.

For the next months I shall be marking Flinders University student’s assignments, preparing for a special day and travelling overseas.

I will begin writing some more ‘teaching thoughts’ in the New Year 2012. so a very happy Christmas holiday to you. Remember you can write to me. You have, I am sure, some wonderful ‘teaching thoughts’ to share with a wider audience.

Have a look at my books. They are set out almost as complete programmes for you to access, especially handy for new teachers and teachers wanting to implement effective spelling and writing genre programmes and programmes that challenge children to think critically and creatively. Especially pertinent, how to implement inquiry and thinking book clubs in your classroom.