Help with verbs and connectives?

I am a prac teacher doing my first set of pracs and have to teach a lesson on Monday about Explanations. Within this lesson I have to explore the importance of connectives (verbs). I am usually not to bad with verbs, but have found this text a bit tricky, maybe I am just stressed.



If you have time, could you go through the text below and highlight the verbs for me?



Many thanks.

Ashley



How does the alarm bed work?



1. An alarm clock, attached to the head of the bed, rings when it is time to get up.



2. Once it rings the sleeper has five minutes to get out of bed because that alarm starts a five minute timer in the mattress springs.



3. If the pressure on the mattress springs has not changed when the five minutes are up (in other words, if the sleeper is still in bed) then a latch at the head of the bed is released. This causes the mattress and bed base to catapult forward.



4. This, in turn, causes the sleeper to be ejected from the bed.Help with verbs and connectives?
Ok, I am not sure what exactly what you mean by connectives. We (in the US) just call them verbs or simple predicates (action or linking). Unless you are calling a linking verb a connective. But I will try and answer for you.



1. rings is the verb and is action (the alarm clock is the subject and it is doing the action) -- is is the linking verb with in the clause ';when it is time to get up). it links 'it' with 'time'



2. again rings is the action verb telling what it is doing. (with in the phrase ';once it rings'; has is a linking verb linking sleeper to the infinitive phrase 'to get out of bed' starts is an action verb telling what the alarm is doing in the clause that begins with ';because';



3. has is the linking verb linking pressure to not changed (again in a clause) -- are is action in the prepositional phrase. -- is a linking verb -- is released is an action verb (yes 'is' is part of the action verb, it is called a helping verb forming a verb phrase when attached to an action verb. -- causes is an action verb. 'to catapult' is not a verb but an infinitive.



4. causes is an action verb -- while ejected as an action it is part of the infinitive 'to be ejected'.



An action verb shows action from the subject. A linking verb connects the subject to the rest of the sentence is some way.



I hope this helps.