GPS: Verb Tenses
Simple Past vs. Simple Present
Teaching Point: Today you will know that we use different forms of verbs to show when something happened. You will know the difference between the present tense and the simple past tense.
Materials:Vocab: tense, past, present, habitual, conjugate
Chart with timeline (past, present, future), sentence strips with “simple past” and “simple present”, blue tape
Minilesson (Direct Instruction)
Connection: Today we’re going to talk about verb tenses. Like I said on Tuesday, we conjugate, or change, verbs according to time, and we call these different verb forms tenses. There are actually 12 different verb tenses in English, and we’re going to learn all of them this quarter. Don’t worry, they’re all useful for expressing what you mean, and some of them don’t get used very often. However, you as expert writers need to have the tools to say ANYTHING you want to say, so it’s important that you learn all of the verb tenses.
Right now, most of you are having some problems thinking about your ideas in one tense. For example, in your stories, you were all talking about the past, but a lot of you were switching between using the past tense of a verb and the present tense of a verb. Not using the right verb tenses makes your writing really confusing for your reader, so it’s important that you know what you’re doing.
Since there are 12 different forms of verbs, or verb tenses, we’re going to take this entire writing unit to work on some of these different forms. Since most of our writing in this unit is going to focus on the past and the present, we’re going to look at those two verb tenses first. We will talk about the third tense, the future, later on. (In the future, ha ha.)
Teaching Point (Today I’m going to teach you…): Today I’m going to teach you the most basic verb tenses. These are the simple present and the simple past.
Demonstration (Watch me…): Let’s take a look at our timeline here. This point is the present, i.e. RIGHT NOW. We can talk about right now. For example, I can say “I am a teacher,” or “I want to eat a snack,” or “I am talking.” For now, let’s forget about the verbs with “ing” at the end, because those are actually not simple; they are a different verb tense. Today we’re going to only talk about the SIMPLE present.
The simple present is used to do two things:
1) talk about states of being that are happening now, like, “I am”, or “I want”
2) talk about actions that are habitual, or that happen regularly, like “I ride the bus” or “I walk to school”
When would we use the simple present? Really we use it to talk about things that are happening NOW, like our feelings or emotions as they happen, (i.e. I think, or I want, or I have) and also to describe the world in general. So, one great use of the simple present is to make a statement in an essay. For example, “It is wrong to use antibacterial soap because it kills wildlife.”
This is different than when we’re telling a story about something that already happened to us and is FINISHED, because then we’re talking about the past (show on timeline). We use the simple past when we simply want to express than an event is already DONE. FINISHED. The only information we’re giving a reader by using that verb tense is just that the action is over. Example: “Yesterday, I walked to school.” We form the simple past by just adding “ed” to the end of the infinitive. Simple!
However, watch out for irregular verbs. On our chart, we see 3 different types of verbs. Regular verbs like “to walk”, that follow the rules (i.e. just add –ed to form the past tense); irregular verbs like “to eat”, that don’t follow the rules but change their appearance when changing tenses; and the very irregular, unique verb “to be”, which changes in all sorts of weird ways when it changes tense.
Active Engagement: Here are two passages that you need to complete. The verbs are missing. One passage is all in the simple past. The other passage is in the simple present. Fill in the blanks. This exercise will help you remember that we use different tenses for different kinds of writing. / Link:
Closing/Additional Instruction
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