Most of English grammar can be taught as a rule: add -ed. The verbs children use most are the exception. Go becomes went, eat becomes ate, think becomes thought, and no spelling rule covers any of them. They are learned by meeting them — many times, in context, in a form a child is willing to repeat.
Repetition without drill
A worksheet gives a child one pass at each verb. A game gives dozens of passes in ten minutes, because every turn says the pair out loud. Tense Twist is built on twenty-six irregular verb pairs and plays with rules children already know, so the repetition is the point of the game rather than a chore attached to it.
Story first, then play
Children learn a word faster when they have heard it in a story. Our Dog Max slips twenty-seven irregular past-tense verbs into one dog’s day: what Max does, and what Max did. Read it aloud, then deal the deck. The bundle pairs the two.
In the clinic
For speech-language pathologists targeting past tense, a single deck isolates the skill for a whole session, and the deck can go home with a one-line note: “We are practicing go / went.”
Both titles were designed by teachers and speech pathologists at Curriculum Linked, Australia. See the deck.
By the CLNA team. Questions or a program idea of your own? Write to us.