Verb Forms: Today and Yesterday

A verb table takes up the top half of this 2nd grade verb-forms worksheet. Six pictured verbs run down the left — dance, read, jump, wander, run, sing — under two column headings, he/she today and yesterday. Four cells are filled in as models (danced, read, jumps, runs) and the other eight are dashed boxes for the child to complete: dances, reads, jumped, wanders, wandered, ran, sings, sang. Below the table are three picture sentences with a gap and the base verb in a chip at the end: Last night Mia ______ for an hour (dance). Anna ______ at the picnic yesterday (sing). Emma ______ every afternoon (read). The child fills the table, then uses it to finish the sentences.

The table is the point. English verbs change in two directions a second grader has to control at once — the -s of he and she today, and the -ed or the changed vowel of yesterday — and a table puts both on one line so the child can see that jump becomes jumps one way and jumped the other. The given cells are placed so every row has a model somewhere near it. The three sentences then ask for the same forms in use, where the time word (last night, every afternoon) tells the child which column to look in. The teacher watches the irregular rows: a child who writes singed or runned has learned the rule and not yet the exceptions, and the table shows exactly which.

It prints on one sheet with dashed answer boxes large enough for a second grader's writing. The match-the-past-form page is the recognition step before this, the choose-the-right-form page keeps the child circling rather than writing, and the irregular-verbs page does the same table for be, have, do and go.