Time Traveler Verbs
- Grade band
- 2
- Duration
- 35 minutes
- Skill
- Irregular past-tense verbs
- Standards
- L.2.1d — Form and use the past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs (e.g., sat, hid, told).
- Materials
- Student worksheet (printable, included)
- Pencils
Learning objectives
- Students will be able to identify the past-tense form of a frequently occurring irregular verb.
- Students will be able to sort verbs by whether they follow the regular "-ed" pattern or an irregular pattern.
- Students will be able to use irregular past-tense verbs correctly in original sentences.
Lesson procedure
- Warm-up (5 minutes) — I Do. Act out "I sit" and say "Today I sit." Then sit down and say "Yesterday I sat." Point out that "sat" doesn't just add "-ed" — it's a whole different word for the past.
- Sort the cards (12 minutes) — We Do. In pairs, students sort a mixed set of verb cards into "Regular (add -ed)" and "Irregular (different word)" piles, saying each pair aloud (walk/walked, sit/sat).
- Time traveler story (13 minutes) — You Do. Students complete the worksheet story frame, changing each present-tense verb in parentheses to its past-tense form.
- Partner check (3 minutes) — You Do. Partners read their finished stories aloud to each other and check that every verb changed correctly.
- Share-out (2 minutes) — Closure. Ask two students to share one irregular verb pair from today (present and past) with the class.
Printable worksheet
Part 1: Sort the verbs. Write each verb pair under Regular or Irregular.
Word bank: walk/walked · sit/sat · jump/jumped · see/saw · talk/talked · go/went · play/played · give/gave · eat/ate · help/helped
Regular (add -ed): _____________________________
Irregular (different word): _____________________________
Part 2: Time traveler story. Change each verb in parentheses to the past tense.
Yesterday, I ________ (sit) down to eat breakfast. I ________ (see) a bird outside my window, so I ________ (go) to look closer. My mom ________ (give) me some bread, and I ________ (eat) it while I watched the bird fly away.
Try it on your smartboard
The same verb sort, on screen. Drag each card into the correct box — works with touch, a stylus, or a mouse. Reload the page to reset.
Regular (add -ed)
Irregular (different word)
Background for the teacher
Most English verbs form the past tense by adding "-ed" (walk → walked, jump → jumped). Irregular verbs break that pattern entirely (go → went, not "goed"; see → saw, not "seed"). Second graders have usually already internalized the regular pattern strongly enough that they overgeneralize it onto irregular verbs — "runned," "eated," "sitted" are all signs of healthy grammar development, not carelessness.
The goal of this lesson is exposure and repetition with a small, high-frequency set of irregular verbs (sat, hid, told, ate, ran, saw, went, gave), not an exhaustive list. Students learn irregular forms primarily through hearing and using them repeatedly, not through a rule they can apply — there isn't one.
Differentiation
Support: Reduce the sort to six verb pairs, and provide a small picture next to each irregular verb (a bird for "saw," a plate for "ate") as a memory anchor.
Extension: Ask students to write two more sentences about "yesterday" using an irregular verb not used in the story (ran, told, or hid).
ELL support: Pair each irregular verb card with a simple picture showing the action (a bird for "saw," a plate for "ate") so students can anchor the word to meaning without relying on translation.
IEP/504 support: Reduce the story frame to three blanks instead of five, and allow students to say their answers aloud for you to write rather than requiring independent spelling.
Answer key (for teachers)
Part 1 — Sort the verbs. Regular: walk/walked, jump/jumped, talk/talked, play/played, help/helped. Irregular: sit/sat, see/saw, go/went, give/gave, eat/ate.
Part 2 — Time traveler story. sat, saw, went, gave, ate.
Digital extension (optional)
To keep practicing verbs in a fun context, try a fill-in-the-blank story in Giggle Gaps, where every verb blank is labeled clearly.