What are children taught about past and present tense in year 1?
The past and present tenses are all about time. The tense is determined by when an action is happening. If an action has already happened, it is past tense. If it is happening now, it is present tense. If it is about to happen or will happen later, it is future tense.
Verbs are doing words. They describe an action (what is happening). Your child will start to collect together a variety of different action words that they can use. They will act out different actions (e.g. jumping, running, dancing, skipping) and explore what verbs mean.
Often, in order to change the tense of a verb, the verb itself has to be changed in some way. This can often involve adding the suffix (for example, -ed or -ing) to the verb. For example:
- I played (past tense) football yesterday
- I play (present tense) football
- I am playing (present tense) football
Learning the spelling rules for adding -ed and -ing is a key skill for your child to learn.
Eventually, these past and present tense verbs will be used in simple sentences by your child. This will combine everything that your child has learnt to decide if the sentence is happening now or in the past, which version of the verb to use, how to add -ed or -ing to the verb and put this all together into a short sentence.
If you're looking to help your child learn more about the different tenses at home, we have plenty of resources catered to year 1 children on this topic. As well as these and doing some keyword searches, we have also included a few more ideas for games and activities below.
All of these are designed to help your child confidently learn and use the past and present tense in their spoken language and writing:
What Did You Do Today? | Garden Sorting Tenses Game | |
At the end of the day, try asking your child what they did today. Focus on them using the past tense version of verbs to describe some of the actions they have done. Then ask what they are doing now - focus on present tense verbs to describe them. | Label stones (or some similar object found outdoors) in the garden with verbs and past tense versions of verbs. Can your child sort the verbs into piles of the correct tenses? Can they put all the past tense verbs together? Your child could also play this Twinkl Go! game which involves sorting the verbs into the correct bowl, based on if it is past, present or future tense. Please note, you need an Ultimate subscription to access Twinkl Go! | |
Flower Petal Verbs | What Does the Thing Do? | |
You could use this flower petal template to create two flowers. In the middle of the first flower, write ‘verb’. On the petals of this flower, ask your child to write as many actions as they can think of (e.g. jump, kick, dance) on the petals and stick them around the middle. In the middle of the second flower, write ‘past tense’. On the petals of this flower, ask your child to write the past tense versions of the verbs they listed before and stick them around the middle. | In the middle of a piece of paper, ask your child to draw an animal or thing (for an extra challenge, they could build a representation of the thing using playdough or building blocks). Around the outside of this drawing, encourage your child to write as many actions (verbs) that the creature or thing can do. For example, if they drew a dog, they may write bark, run, jump, eat, etc. |
A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents
Step 1: Verbs
Your child will begin by exploring what verbs are and what they represent. A verb is a doing/action word (jump, run, swim, write, think) and represents something that is done. To help your child explore these words, they could try acting out different actions and name what it is called. You could also encourage them to think of as many different actions that they do during the day.
These verb action posters can be a great memory aid for you to use at home with your child.
Step 2: Past and Present Verbs
After your child has learnt all about verbs and recognises that they are action words that represent things that are done, they will begin to think about things that are happening now and things that have already happened. They will begin to understand that when a verb happens can affect the way it is said and written. At this point, they will begin to experiment with using past and present tense versions of different verbs in their spoken sentences. They will recognise that ‘I listening to the teacher’ doesn’t make sense as a spoken phrase if used in the past tense, but ‘I listened to the teacher’ does.
Visual cards and puzzle pieces are a good way to match past and present tense versions of verbs and recognising how the tense changes the verb.
Step 3: Adding -ed and -ing
As your child becomes more familiar with verbs and the tense of different verbs, they will begin to explore the spelling rules for changing verbs. At first, your child will recognise and add -ed to turn some verbs into past tense and add -ing to turn others into the present tense. This is the most simple way of changing verb tenses and is often a straightforward place to begin (however, this doesn’t work for all sentences and verbs).
This presentation is full of advice and examples for your child to attempt and is a great way for them to explore the spelling patterns for adding the suffixes -ing, -er, -est and -ed.
Step 4: Sentence Building
Your child will now begin using past and present tense verbs in written sentences. This will mean that they will put all the skills that they have learnt about the past and present tense so far into practice. They will need to understand that events happen at different stages of time and that verbs change depending on the tense before putting this information together to form simple sentences. They will begin to recognise when a sentence is happening now or has happened in the past. For example, ‘The the clock is ticking’ = present tense, ‘The clock ticked’ = past tense.
Sentence builder cards are a great way for your child to build simple sentences. Why not challenge your child to change the tense of the constructed sentence by adjusting the verb?
Did you know..?We have other great guides that help parents teach children other tricky English topics! Take a look at theHow to Teach English Homework Helppage for more.
