Helping Verbs Worksheet

An important subtopic of verbs is the helping verb or auxiliary verb. But before teaching the students all about helping verbs, it is essential to teach them about verbs. The best way to teach a primary kid about verbs is by making them understand that verbs are doing words. Verbs are those words that represent action in the present, past and in future. Verbs are basically divided into two categories, namely the principal verb (main verb) and the auxiliary verb (helping verbs). Examples of principal verbs are run, go, watch, play etc., whereas examples of helping verbs are be, am, shall, may, has etc. There are plenty of helping verbs worksheets that students can practise from BYJU’S website.

Download Helping Verbs Worksheet 1
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Download Helping Verbs Worksheet 2
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What are Helping Verbs?

As the name suggests, helping verbs are those verbs that generally help the main (principal verbs) to express their tenses, voices or moods. For example, “Sam is playing football”. Here, the helping verb ‘is’ is used to express the tense of the main verb ‘play’, i.e. present continuous tense. It’s important for students to understand the concept of helping verbs as it will help them to strengthen their concept of basic grammar rules. Helping verbs can be categorised into two types, mainly the primary helping verbs and the modal helping verbs.

Primary Helping Verbs

There are some particular helping verbs that are commonly used in English grammar. These are known as primary helping verbs as they can help the main verb to express its tenses, voices, and mood also act as the main verb in sentences. For example, “Sam has gone to school”. Here, ‘has’ is used as the primary helping verb to express the tense of the main verb ‘gone’, i.e. past tense. Whereas “Sam has a dog.”, here, ‘has’ is used as the main verb. There are mainly three primary helping verbs

• Be form – The Be forms include am, are, is, was, were, been, being, and be (in its base form).
• Have form – The Have forms include have, has, had and having.
• Do form – The Do forms include do, did and does.

Children can practise the helping verbs ‘am, is, are’ worksheets to clarify their doubts and better understand the concepts. For more Kids Learning activities similar to Worksheets for Kids, visit BYJU’S website.

Modal Helping Verbs

Modal helping verbs, on the other hand, doesn’t help the main verb to express tenses; rather, they’re used to express necessity, possibility and probability. Modal helping verbs include can, could, shall, should, will, would, must, may, might and ought to. For example, “Sam might arrive tomorrow”. You will get several modal helping verbs worksheets at BYJU’S website for practice.

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