Verb Practice Ideas

Ways to learn irregular forms:

Give the students a pretest of the verbs so they can see which they already know and which they still need to learn. If they don’t know any, that’s fine. That is important information to know.

Have the students make index cards based on the verbs they need to learn. Use orange to write the base form and red for the past form (or pink/purple for the past participle). Write the base form on one card and the other form on another card

Use the cards to play games such as Concentration (Memory) and Go Fish.

Use internet games

Have students stand at the board in a line (individually or in pairs). Give a base form of a verb. They write the corresponding (past or past participle) form. Do this 20 or 25 times, going through a list of the verbs they most need to practice.

Make worksheets that focus on verbs you know they need to work on. Include cloze sentences (fill in the blank), matching forms (match the base form to the past or participle form), and simple practices of changing base forms to the requested form (ex: change this word to past).

Have students test each other with a game of verb tennis. They serve a word (base form or participle) to their partner by showing a card. They keep going until the partner messes up. Then they get a point and the partner starts to serve. Go back and forth until 4 (or other number you prefer) points are earned by a player.