Irregular past tense verbs worksheets

By grade

• 2nd Grade A gentler on-ramp
• 3rd Grade Right on level
• 4th Grade A step harder

What students need to know

Irregular verbs don't add -ed for the past. They change: go became went, eat became ate.

This skill runs from 2nd grade through 4th grade. Pick a grade above for level-matched sentences, teaching notes, and worksheets.

Irregular past tense verbs across the grades

2nd grade

Most verbs make their past tense with -ed (jump, jumped), but irregular verbs change instead: go/went, see/saw, eat/ate. Second graders learn the everyday set through practice, choosing the real past form over the tempting -ed guess like "goed."

3rd grade

Irregular verbs form the past without -ed: teach/taught, catch/caught, fly/flew, swim/swam. Third graders expand their set beyond the everyday verbs and get faster at rejecting overregularized forms like "teached."

4th grade

By 4th grade, the working set includes the harder changes: choose/chose, freeze/froze, tear/tore, swing/swung. Students also start separating the plain past from the past participle (wrote vs. written), a distinction that matters once perfect tenses arrive in 5th grade.