C Curriculum Explorer
English·Grammar & Punctuation·procedural

Irregular past tense verbs

Form and use the past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs correctly (e.g., sat, hid, told, went, came, ran), recognising that these do not follow the regular -ed pattern

Suggested ages 7–8

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Learning journey

Your child is learning more sophisticated grammar — using irregular verbs and plurals correctly, punctuating speech, choosing the right pronouns and conjunctions, and understanding when to use different verb tenses.

Evidence of understanding

  • Supply the correct past tense of common irregular verbs: go→went, see→saw, run→ran, tell→told
  • Correct over-regularised forms in writing (e.g. change 'goed' to 'went', 'hided' to 'hid')
  • Write a short recount using at least five irregular past-tense verbs accurately

Assessment prompt

When Irregular past tense verbs writes about something that happened in the past with an irregular verb — like "run" or "sit" — do they write "ran" and "sat" rather than "runned" and "sitted"?

Standards alignment

No external standards are linked to this topic.