THE VERB: The importance of the action word!

Verbs must be taught to the child.  If verbs are not taught, the child cannot formulate basic sentence structures that are used for commenting, directing, reporting, picture reading.  If the child cannot comment or report, he cannot engage in conversation! The child needs verbs to offer: actor action object content, e.g. boy throw ball.  The child need verbs to direct:  throw ball.  The child needs verbs to comment: I throw or I throw ball.  The initial verbs taught should be concrete verbs that the child can enact with specificity such as: eat, pour, cut, wipe as opposed to general verbs such as play or clean.  The child should learn these action labels through enactment as opposed to picture identification.  With picture selection, it is unclear to what the child is referring when the verb is said.  Is the child selecting the picture based on   the action or the person or the tool the person is using.   However, if the child enacts the verb, we can see the action and help him through the action.  We can make sure we teach the verb across different objects as well as contexts.  A patterned activity in which the child is directed to do the action becomes a perfect way to introduce a new verb.  (see the blog on patterns and teaching verbs).