Verb groups

Well done! That was a long, hard lesson!

Verb groups are probably the hardest of all the word groups; they are just so slippery and subtle. But you have done an amazing job getting this far.

And even though you might have a headache right now, if you step back you should be able to see that you actually know more than you ever thought possible about verbs and verb groups:

• Verbs represent an action or process.
• Verbs can be alone or in groups.
• Some verbs can act as tense helpers to tell us when a process happens in time, and whether or not it has been completed.
• Modal verbs work with other verbs to create modality.
• Modality means how likely something is, how necessary something is, how obliged or how inclined someone is to do something, or how able someone is.
• To make things confusing, secondary verbs and adverbs can also create modality effects.
• Plus secondary verbs can make all sorts of other meanings, like what stage of the process an action is at (just beginning, about to end, etc).
• It can be genuinely difficult to categorise individual words in a verb group because the same word can be a tense helper, modal verb, or secondary verb depending on context—but luckily that's not super important. 
• Adverbs descibe the quality of process, but they are not an official part of the verb group.
• But adverbs can be embedded inside a verb group!
• 'Not' is a special word with its own rules about where it should go in a verb group.
• The verbs be and get can be added to a main verb to create the passive voice if we also hide the actor responsible for the main verb.
• Passive voice hides the people or things that performed the action, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad.

So much verb knowledge! But now you have almost all the language you could need to analyse verb groups in a snippet.

It's time for a rest! See you next time!

Where did the snippets come from?

We used snippets from a lot of different texts in this lesson. 26 altogether! Here are the ones we referenced most frequently:

R.J. Palacio's Wonder follows the school life of a boy, Auggie, who has an extraordinary facial difference, and is attending a mainstream school for the first time in grade 5.

Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief is the first book in a series about a school kid who is the son of a Greek god. Full of monsters and heroes and divine power.

In Roald Dahl's classic, The Fantastic Mr Fox, a clever fox outwits 3 grotesque farmers.

That Eye, the Sky is about a boy in a country town whose family struggle after the father of the family is paralysed in a car accident. Then a mysterious stranger claiming to be preacher arrives.

The second book in Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events, about three children trying to thwart the greedy, malevolent Count Olaf. The Reptile Room features dastardly plans and dangerous snakes.

The Giver is about a boy who has been chosen to remember and experience individuality and emotion in a world where all variation has been eradicated.

The Graveyard Book is about a perfectly ordinary boy who lives in a graveyard and is raised by ghosts.

A lyrical adventure, the River and the Book tells the tale of a landscape and community devastated by colonial powers.