Description
What our Verb Tenses – Grades 4-6 lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Verb Tenses – Grades 4-6 explores verb tenses. At the end of the lesson, students will be able to identify and correctly use the past, present, and future tenses of verbs, including the use of helping verbs, regular, and irregular verbs. This lesson is for students in 4th grade, 5th grade, and 6th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the green box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. Several of the suggested adjustments are for the lesson activity. You can limit students to a specific number of sentences for the activity or have them use the words to create just 12 sentences, one for each verb form from the content pages. For an additional activity, you can have your students identify the verb forms used in sentences in their current reading content. You can also have your students write a poem of that’s at least 12 sentences long and uses each verb form. Finally, for the closing of the lesson, you can have your students write a short story about visiting the past or living in the future using a time machine.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
VERB TENSES – GRADES 4-6 LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Verbs
The Verb Tenses – Grades 4-6 lesson plan includes two content pages. Verbs, as you already know, describe actions or states of being. They also form the main part of a sentence’s predicate (a sentence or clause that contains the verb and states something about the subject of the sentence). Sometimes, the verb is part of the predicate: John and Mary walked home together. In this example, the verb describes the action that took place.
Verbs can also provide information about the time the action took place—in the past, present, or future. You should make sure to use the correct verb tense. Past, present, and future are all simple tense verb forms. You might have already learned about them. Some verbs require helping verbs or spelling changes. You can also use helping verbs alone or with other helping verbs. The lesson includes example sentences using verbs in the simple present, simple past, or simple future. In the future tense example, they use the helping verb will.
Next, the lesson lists some other helping verbs, like am, is, are, was, were, and being. When you use these helping verbs, you’re creating a new form of the verb called the Perfect or Progressive. They differ slightly from the simple past, present, and future verb tenses.
Perfect and Progressive Verb Forms
It’s important to understand tenses because they tell about the time an action occurs. We use the perfect form to indicate a completed or “perfected” action or condition. These verbs use a form of have or had + the past participle. The lesson includes example sentences for the present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect.
We use the progressive form to indicate an ongoing action that is currently in progress. These verbs use a form of to be + the present participle (an –ing verb). The lesson includes example sentences for the present progressive, past progressive, and future progressive.
Finally, we sometimes use the perfect and progressive forms together. The lesson includes example sentences for the present perfect progressive, past perfect progressive, and future perfect progressive.
All of the examples in this section could also include other helping verbs. These change depending on the information that you want to communicate and the time of the action that’s taking place.
Verbs describe actions or states of being. The simplest form of these are the past, present, and future, but we sometimes need to use the perfect or progressive forms as well, as they differ slightly. It’s important to use verb form tenses correctly to communicate with others!
VERB TENSES – GRADES 4-6 LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Verb Tenses – Grades 4-6 lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
CREATING SENTENCES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
Students will work with a partner to complete the lesson activity. Each pair will create as many sentences as possible using the given verbs, helping verbs, and phrases. They can use the words and phrases multiple times or combine them. They should also add details and other nouns, subjects, articles, adjectives, adverbs, and more.
Students may also work alone or in groups to complete the activity.
MATCHING PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet asks students to first match sentences to the correct verb form. They will also read sentences and will choose the best answer choice to fill in the blank in each sentence.
VERB TENSES – GRADES 4-6 HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
For the homework assignment, students will first use the correct helping verb or verbs with the given verb for each sentence. They will then write a sentence using each of five verb forms: simple present, present perfect, present progressive, perfect progressive, and simple future.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
