Verbs in Disguise: Gerunds, Participles, Infinitives
- Grade band
- 8
- Duration
- 45 minutes
- Skill
- Verbals: gerunds, participles, infinitives
- Standards
- L.8.1a — Explain the function of verbals (gerunds, participles, infinitives) in general and their function in particular sentences.
- Materials
- Student worksheet (printable, included)
- Pencils
Learning objectives
- Students will be able to identify a gerund, participle, or infinitive in a sentence.
- Students will be able to explain the function each verbal is performing (noun, adjective, or part of a verb phrase).
- Students will be able to write an original sentence using each type of verbal correctly.
Lesson procedure
- Warm-up (5 minutes) — I Do. Write "Swimming is fun" and "The swimming pool was cold" on the board. Both use "swimming" — ask what job it's doing in each (subject noun vs. describing word).
- Three verbals, three tests (12 minutes) — We Do. Introduce gerunds, participles, and infinitives with one test each, applying all three to board examples as a class.
- Worksheet practice (18 minutes) — You Do. Students complete the worksheet, labeling verbals by type and explaining their function.
- Write your own (7 minutes) — You Do. Students write one original sentence using each type of verbal.
- Share-out (3 minutes) — Closure. A few students read one sentence aloud; the class identifies which type of verbal was used.
Printable worksheet
Part 1: Label the verbal. Identify each underlined verbal as gerund, participle, or infinitive, and explain its job.
1. Reading is my favorite hobby. Type: _____________ Job: _____________
2. I want to finish my homework early. Type: _____________ Job: _____________
3. The broken window let in cold air. Type: _____________ Job: _____________
4. She loves cooking for her family. Type: _____________ Job: _____________
Part 2: Write your own. Write one original sentence using each type correctly.
Gerund: ________________________________________________
Participle: ________________________________________________
Infinitive: ________________________________________________
Try it on your smartboard
Sort each underlined verbal into Gerund, Participle, or Infinitive — works with touch, a stylus, or a mouse. Reload the page to reset.
Gerund
Participle
Infinitive
Background for the teacher
A verbal is a verb form doing a different job. A gerund ends in "-ing" and acts as a noun ("Swimming is fun" — swimming is the subject). A participle also often ends in "-ing" or "-ed" but acts as an adjective ("The swimming pool was cold" — swimming describes pool). An infinitive is "to" plus the base verb, acting as a noun, adjective, or adverb ("I love to swim"). The genuinely hard part for eighth graders is that gerunds and participles can look identical ("swimming") and only the sentence's structure tells you which job the word is doing.
Give students a reliable test rather than asking them to just "feel" the difference: if you can replace the "-ing" word with "it" or "that," it's a gerund acting as a noun ("Swimming is fun" → "It is fun"). If it's directly describing a noun next to it, it's a participle acting as an adjective ("the swimming pool" → the pool, not the swimming, is what's being talked about).
Differentiation
Support: Provide the "replace with it/that" test for gerunds and the "describes a nearby noun" test for participles as a printed reference students can check each Part 1 answer against.
Extension: Challenge students to write one sentence that uses all three verbal types correctly at once.
ELL support: Isolate one verbal type at a time rather than mixing all three from the start — practice gerunds to fluency, then participles, then infinitives, before asking students to distinguish between them.
IEP/504 support: Reduce Part 1 to two examples, and provide the test (replace with it/that, or check if it describes a nearby noun) written directly above each item.
Answer key (for teachers)
Part 1 — Label the verbal. 1. Gerund — acts as the subject noun. 2. Infinitive — acts as the object of "want." 3. Participle — describes "window." 4. Gerund — acts as the object of "loves."
Part 2 — Write your own. Open-ended: accept any grammatically correct sentence that correctly uses each verbal type in the role named.
Digital extension (optional)
To see how verb forms shape a story, try a fill-in-the-blank story in Giggle Gaps, where verb-type blanks are labeled clearly.