Students need to speak with grade-appropriate command of standard English conventions, according to the California Department of Education. This includes identifying and properly using past, present and future tenses in speaking. To make a game of teaching this, have children play “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” In teams, have students construct sentences in past, present and future tense using proper subject-verb agreement. Encourage silly sentences. To get them started, work together to complete the sentences "Yesterday I ate...," “Today I am eating...," and "Tomorrow I will eat..." Ask teams to compose their own sentences that follow this format, encouraging them to arrive at answers the whole group agrees are correct.
Students not only need to learn to speak using proper English, they need to identify correct past, present and future tenses in writing. By making use of newspapers and magazines, you can engage your third-graders with the everyday writing that they’re surrounded by. Send teams of three on a verb search through appropriate sections of a newspaper or magazine. Using highlighting markers, ask students to highlight past tense verbs in green, present tense verbs in yellow, and future tense verbs in blue. Discuss the results as a class or make a verb list to post in your room.
It can be tricky for young students to manage proper subject-verb agreement when they’re speaking. The difficulty of learning the proper verb tense that also agrees in number with the subjects is further compounded by irregular verbs. This is a problem that can be resolved through frequent exposure to language and practice. Select an interesting paragraph from a book or magazine and omit all of the verbs, replacing them with blank spaces. Have students work in teams to read the sentences aloud and verbally test out verbs that would work in each sentence. Accept all reasonable answers.
Although “spell check” will catch many subject-verb agreement problems for your students as they get older, it isn’t infallible and this basic grammatical convention needs to be practiced. To teach students to correctly use subjects and verbs in simple sentences and with various tenses, give each one ten sheets of 8 1/2 by 11-inch paper. With the paper in landscape position, ask them to cut each piece in three long strips (within two inches of the left margin). Staple the ten sheets together along the left edge, creating a book. On the top strip of each paper have children write proper nouns. On the middle strips have them write verbs in various tenses that agree with the subject, and add prepositional phrases to each bottom strip. Students can reveal a wide variety of silly sentences by lifting up different strips of paper.