Lesson Plan
Learning About Words: Past Tense
Use a playful theater activity to teach your first graders how to change a verb from the present to the past tense.
Grade:
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This reading and writing lesson plan helps first graders expand their understanding of grammar by learning how to change a present-tense verb to a verb in the past tense. First, a playful theater activity gets children up and moving to facilitate their learning about words in the present and past tense. Then, young learners are guided through the process of adding -ed to the end of regular verbs to make them past tense verbs. Finally, children apply their new knowledge to a set of practice words.
Learning Objectives
Students will be able to recognize and write verbs using the past tense -ed.
Introduction
(5 minutes)- Gather students together for the start of lesson.
- Review what a verb is and explain what makes a verb special. For example, you might say, “Verbs are our action words and represent the things we do, such as run, eat, or walk.”
- Ask your students to think of other verbs and record them on chart paper or your whiteboard.
- Tell your class that today they will be practicing how to change a verb from the present tense, which means what is happening right now or in the present (e.g., “I walk”) to the past tense, or what already happened (i.e., “I walked”).