KS2 Verbs and Tenses

Verbs are where the Year 6 test asks a pupil to think about meaning rather than just recognise a label. Knowing that were playing is called the past progressive is worth little on its own; knowing that it is the form you need when the game was already going on and the rain arrived in the middle of it is worth a mark. These ten questions work that way throughout. You choose between a tense that reports something finished and one that puts it in progress, spot the sentence written in the passive, pick the modal verb that says only possible rather than certain, and use were in a sentence beginning if I — the one place where what most people say out loud is not what the test counts as standard. Then come the forms that simply have to be known: the simple past of an irregular verb, the past participle that follows have, a verb agreeing with a subject that is easy to mistake for the noun beside it, and a sentence that keeps to one tense from beginning to end. Every explanation names the tense of each wrong option, so a wrong answer still tells you something. Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with any exam board and it is not an exam centre.

• Use the past progressive for an action already under way, and the present progressive for one happening now
• Recognise the present perfect and tell it apart from the simple past
• Identify the passive voice by asking whether the subject is doing the action or receiving it
• Choose a modal verb that matches how certain the sentence is
• Use were after if I in standard written English, and know why was is heard so often
• Form the simple past of an irregular verb and the past participle that follows have
• Make a verb agree with the real subject, not with the nearest noun, and keep one tense across a sentence

The box of apples ______ on the kitchen table. — is. Find the subject before choosing the verb: the thing on the table is the box, and box is singular. Apples is the trap — it is plural and sits right next to the gap, but it belongs to the phrase of apples, which only tells you what is inside.