Speech and Language Therapy Advice
ACTIVITIES TO ENCOURAGE THE USE OF REGULAR PAST TENSE
Individual activities:
1.
Introduce the child to the idea that we change the “doing word” in the
sentence and put –ed on the end to show that something happened in the
past. Help the child to listen to sentences and say whether you are talking
bout now or past by asking them to listen for –ed (they might point to a
symbol to show you). Spend lots of time working on this so that they are
very confident in what they are listening for and going to use.
2.
Play simple games with pictures so that they can practise using –ed on the
end of words (see the group activities for ideas).
3.
Use any spontaneous incidents to talk about and encourage use of past
tense or alternatively make up different scenarios e.g. drop an item on the
floor and ask ‘what happened?’- aim for ‘you dropped the brick’.
4.
Make a diary of school events, home events, special events e.g. we
walked to school, we talked to mum’s friend, we talked about our holiday.
5.
When a child has completed an activity ask “what have you
painted/cooked?” Encourage them to tell other people as well.
6.
Write a story about a favourite TV programme seen.
7.
Discuss school events shortly after they happen e.g. assembly, PE,
dinnertime etc..
8.
Set out play people and act out a story/situation. Talk about what
happened. You could make this meaningful by drawing a story picture
together.
Group activities:
1. Whisper an action to a child to perform. Wait for the child to finish and then
ask another child to say what they think the first child did. It can sometimes
be helpful to have some pictures available to act as prompts.
E.g. He jumped, hopped, skipped, washed his face etc.
2. Play ‘Simon Says’ or ‘charades’ and ask “what did you do?” “What did Lizzie
do?” etc.
3. Collect action pictures of verbs that follow the regular past tense rule
(magazines, the internet or published resources are good places to look).
Play a simple board game whereby to have a go each child must describe one
of the pictures as though it had happened yesterday, eg. “Yesterday the boy
painted a picture.”
D:\533563280.doc
Alternatively, it can be fun to invent new rules for a favourite game, eg. you
can be saved from the snake in snakes and ladders if you take a card and say
a good sentence to go with it.
4. Write down or draw some ‘feelings’. Each player takes a turn and acts out the
expression they see. Others have to guess. “You looked happy… You looked
frightened….etc..
5. See if the children can think of sensible endings for different story lines, eg. “I
went to the park and I… played with my friends, looked at the flowers,
watched the football match…”
SOME VERBS TO USE:
Talked, listened, watched, looked, searched, played, painted, coloured, walked,
jumped, hopped, climbed, crawled, kicked, rolled, dropped, bounced, baked,
cooked, phoned, called, remembered, or any other words that are particularly
relevant or meaningful to the child.
When the child is getting good at using the regular past tense you can try thinking
about some irregular past tense verbs e.g. saw, knew made, went, came, ran,
sang, sold, bought, fell. You will probably have come across a few as you played
some of the games already. They can be very confusing and you might want to
start a little book or box of “tricky action words” and practise them together.
Page 2 of 2
D:\533563280.doc