Lesson overview and objectives
This plan is for a single lesson of about 50 to 60 minutes on English irregular verbs. It suits upper-primary, secondary, or adult learners at roughly A2 to B1 level and can be adjusted up or down. The focus is the past simple, with an optional extension to the past participle.
Content objective: Students will use the past simple form of common irregular verbs to talk about past events.
Language objectives: By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:
- say and write the base form and past simple form of ten to twelve irregular verbs;
- ask and answer questions in the past simple using “did” plus the base form;
- write five sentences about yesterday using irregular verbs correctly.
If you want help phrasing objectives like these, see these language objective examples.
Materials: whiteboard, verb cards (base form on one set, past form on another), a short gap-fill worksheet, mini whiteboards or paper, and a pair-work question sheet.
Before you start: the verbs to teach
Irregular verbs form their past tense or past participle in ways that do not follow the regular “-ed” pattern, so learners generally have to learn them individually. Choose a small, high-frequency set rather than a long list. A reasonable starter set:
| Base form | Past simple | Past participle |
|---|---|---|
| go | went | gone |
| see | saw | seen |
| take | took | taken |
| eat | ate | eaten |
| write | wrote | written |
| buy | bought | bought |
| make | made | made |
| have | had | had |
| come | came | come |
| put | put | put |
“Be” (was/were, been) behaves differently from the others and is usually taught separately.
Step-by-step lesson plan
| Time | Stage | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 5 min | Warm-up | Ask “What did you do yesterday?” Collect answers and note any past forms students already use, including mistakes, on the board without correcting yet. |
| 10 min | Noticing | Show two columns of sentences, present and past (“I go to school” / “I went to school”). Ask what changed. Ask students to sort the verbs into groups (see below). A short discovery phase like this follows the inductive grammar lesson approach; you can instead present the forms directly if time is short. |
| 10 min | Controlled practice | Students complete a gap-fill worksheet with the target verbs, then check in pairs. |
| 15 min | Game practice | Play a matching game, bingo, or pelmanism with base and past forms (see activities below). |
| 10 min | Communicative practice | Pairs ask and answer “What did you do yesterday / last weekend?” using at least five target verbs. |
| 5 min | Wrap-up | Exit task: write three sentences with irregular verbs. Collect and check. |
Grouping verbs by pattern
Sorting verbs into patterns can reduce the memory load, though many verbs fit more than one group and some do not fit any.
- No change: put, cut, hit, set.
- Vowel change: sing/sang, drink/drank, swim/swam, come/came.
- -ought / -aught endings: buy/bought, think/thought, teach/taught, catch/caught.
- Past and participle the same: make/made/made, have/had/had, tell/told/told (a longer list is in irregular verbs with the same past and past participle).
- Three different forms: go/went/gone, see/saw/seen, write/wrote/written.
Ask students to suggest their own groups before offering yours. Different sensible groupings are fine.
Practice activities
- Matching pairs (pelmanism). Spread base-form cards and past-form cards face down. Students turn over two at a time and keep matches, saying a sentence with each match.
- Bingo. Students fill a grid with past forms. Call out base forms; students cross off the matching past form.
- Irregular verb battleships. Students place verbs on a grid and call coordinates; a verb is only “sunk” if the student uses it correctly in a past simple sentence.
- Three in a row (for the extension). Students match base form, past simple, and past participle cards to form sets.
- Find someone who. Students walk around asking “Did you eat fish yesterday?” and record names.
Games are good for repetition, but check that students also produce full sentences, not only matching cards.
Common errors to expect
- Adding -ed to an irregular verb: “I goed to the market.” Respond by asking students to find the correct form from the sorted groups.
- Using the past form after “did”: “Did you went?” The correct form is “Did you go?” Remind students that “did” already carries the past tense.
- Mixing up past simple and past participle: “I have saw that film.” This becomes relevant if you extend to the present perfect: “I have seen that film.”
- Pronunciation of “read”: the past form is spelled the same but pronounced differently from the base form.
- Verbs with two accepted past forms: learners may ask whether to write smelled or smelt; see smelled or smelt.
Correct gently and, where possible, ask the student to self-correct before giving the answer.
Differentiation and extension
- Support: reduce the list to six verbs, provide a word bank, and use picture cards.
- Challenge: add the past participle column and ask for present perfect sentences (“I have written three emails today”), or ask students to write a short story using at least eight irregular verbs.
- Mixed levels: pair stronger students with those who need support and give the stronger partner the role of checker.
Quick assessment
Use a short check at the end or at the start of the next lesson:
- Ten-item gap-fill with base forms in brackets.
- Five error-correction sentences, for example “She goed home early.” (Borrow the format from the sentence correction exercises.)
- A two-minute speaking task: tell your partner three things you did last weekend.
Mark for accuracy of verb form first, then for the overall sentence. Note which verbs the class still finds difficult and recycle them in the next lesson’s warm-up.
Related lessons
Verb form practice pairs well with sentence-level work. If your next lesson moves to sentence structure, try the independent and dependent clauses lesson plan, where students can reuse their past simple sentences as clauses.