1. Subjects and Verbs
Creating Sentences

2. What is a subject?
A subject is what the sentence is about:
She walked home.
The boat was huge!
My brother poured syrup
on my new shoes.
In each sentence above, the subject in blue is what the
sentence is about.

3. What is a verb?
A verb is an action. The verb in a sentence tells you
what the subject does.
James rushed to the store.
My car exploded.
The Lakers signed Steve Nash.
In each sentence above, the verb in red tells us
what the subject did.

4. So what?
Subjects and verbs are the basic building blocks
of sentences. Each sentence needs at least
one subject and one verb in order to be
complete. Here is a good definition for a
sentence:
“A sentence is a subject in action.”
Any time you’re writing a sentence, you need
to be able to answer this question: What is
the subject doing?

5. Now, try creating a few simple
sentences yourself.
Write down three simple sentences that contain
a subject and a verb.

6. A few quick things to remember:
A subject is usually a noun (a
person, place, thing, or idea).
A verb is often an action you can visualize, like
running, jumping, or exploding.
However, sometimes the action in a sentence is
in the form of a helping or linking verb.

7. Helping and linking verbs.
A helping or linking verb is an action that is
sometimes hard to visualize or explain. For
example, “She is tall,” where the linking verb
“is” is the verb.

8. Time for some
dramatic grammar!