Educational Rap website offers an innovative way to learn the names and functions of verb tenses using catchy beats and also has teaching resources to combine with verb tense rapping lessons. The Musical English Lessons International website includes a verb poem by Iris Boarder titled, "All That the Book Claims is True." The poem is written with blanks next to verbs in parentheses so that students must identify the correct tense through context clues; multiple tenses appear throughout the poem.
The ReadWriteThink website recommends starting a lesson with Cynthia Rylant's "When I was Young in the Mountains." After reading the book, discuss the story and verb tenses used in the text. Following the class discussion, use the past tense verb assessment worksheet ot help students connect verb tenses of their own stories through creating a tabbed, illustrated Flipbook.
To host a classroom verb tense competition, as Dave's ESL Cafe suggests, first conduct the verb tense lesson and review. Divide the class into teams to practice, then one player from each team will come to the front of the room. As the instructor dictates a situation, the players identify the verb tense theme in the depicted situation and write a sentence to follow where the instructor ends. For example, the instructor reads the following sentence aloud "Emily goes to soccer practice every Tuesday." Following the sentence, the players at the board write a matching verb tense sentence to follow, such as, "After practice she always goes out to eat with the team."
A practical method for remembering is using mnemonics. Two types of mnemonics that may be especially helpful for remembering verb tenses are acronyms and acrostics. Acronyms are invented combinations of letters with each letter acting as a cue to an idea you need to remember; acrostics are a invented sentences where the first letter of each word is a cue to an idea you need to remember. For example, a mnemonic acronym would be PIT for "Progressive, -ing, to be." A useful acrostic would be Sam's Dog Eats Super Fast Everyday for "Simple describes eternal states and frequent events."