Language Arts Grade Six

Unit Five, Lesson Two: Irregular Verbs

  1. clamp
  2. damp
  3. stamp
  4. tramp
  5. hamper
  6. weather
  7. clouds
  8. storm
  9. hurricane
  10. tornado
  1. humidity
  2. intense
  3. pressure
  4. colonize
  5. expedition
  6. territory
  7. expand
  8. settle
  9. mission
  10. explorers
Irregular Verbs

Here are the basic rules for forming verbs in the past tense: 



	1. Just add -ed. This works for most verbs.
	   EXAMPLES: walk/walked, jump/jumped, scream/screamed.

	2. Just add -d. This works for some verbs which end with an e.
	   EXAMPLES: hike/hiked, wipe/wiped, fire/fired, time/timed.

	3. Drop the y and add -ied. This works for many words ending in y.
	   EXAMPLES: carry/carried, fry/fried, bury/buried.
	   NOT: play/played, stay/stayed.

	4. Double the final consonant and add -ed. 
	   EXAMPLES: clap/clapped, wrap/wrapped, clot/clotted, drop/dropped.
Many verbs do not follow any of these patterns. Here are some examples: 

	fly/flew		grow/grew		swim/swam

	fall/fell		take/took		read/read

	hold/held		stand/stood		sit/sat

	tear/tore		break/broke		blow/blew

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