Understanding Helping Verbs and How to Use Them

Homeschool Pop

This engaging animated video introduces students to the concept of helping verbs through a relatable analogy of friendship and teamwork. Narrated by an energetic character alongside his silent friend Bob, the video explains that just as people sometimes need a buddy to get things done, main verbs sometimes need a "helper" to fully express an action or state. The content breaks down the distinct roles of main verbs versus helping verbs, emphasizing that helping verbs work together with main verbs to complete a sentence's meaning. The video covers key grammatical rules, specifically focusing on the sentence structure rule that helping verbs always appear immediately before the main verb. Through five clear, illustrated examples ranging from "The park has opened" to "I am driving," the narrator guides viewers through the process of identifying both the action (main verb) and the helper. The latter half of the video transitions into an interactive format, asking viewers to identify the verbs before revealing the answer, making it an active learning experience. Ideally suited for elementary language arts instruction, this resource simplifies abstract grammar rules into visual and social concepts students can easily grasp. It addresses the common confusion between different types of verbs and provides a fool-proof strategy for spotting them in sentences. Teachers can use this video to introduce verb phrases, teaching sentence structure, or as a review tool for identifying parts of speech.