Irregular Verb Worksheet

Whether you’re making your own irregular verb worksheet or looking for one that’s already done, you’re in the right place. Below, you’ll find activities to use and/or tailor to your students’ own unique needs; you’ll also find ideas for more activities not included here.

What Should I Include on an Irregular Verb Worksheet?

When you first introduce irregular verbs to your students, it will probably be within the context of simple past tense verbs. If that’s as far as you’ve gotten, then your irregular verb worksheet should only include activities that pertain to simple past verbs. With slightly more advanced students working on present perfect or even more advanced students learning past perfect, you’ll need to include activities that allow them to practice using the past participles of irregular verbs.

No matter how advanced your students are, include some easy, medium and hard activities on your worksheet. You can use these activities as they are or use them as inspiration to come up with your own activities.

Easy Irregular Verb Activities

The following activities are considered easy because they simply require students to fill in blanks with specific instructions on how to do so. They can be made more difficult by requiring the students to fill in the blanks from memory (without using an irregular verb list or chart).

Write the past simple form of each verb.

1. do - ___________
2. buy - ___________
3. come - ___________
4. hear - ___________
5. feed - ___________
6. hurt - ___________
7. forget - ___________
8. write - ___________
9. think - ___________
10. speak - ___________

Write the past participle form of each verb.

1. begin - ___________
2. find - ___________
3. tell - ___________
4. steal - ___________
5. swear - ___________
6. mistake - ___________
7. let - ___________
8. keep - ___________
9. freeze - ___________
10. do - ___________

Complete the chart.

• Base - Simple Past - Past Participle
• Teach - Taught - Taught
• Shoot - ___________ - Shot
• Quit - Quit - ___________
• ___________ - Ran - ___________
• Fight - ___________ - ___________
• ___________ - ___________ - Had
• Win - ___________ - Won
• Take - Took - ___________
• ___________ - Shook - Shaken
• Drive - Drove - ___________
• Bring - ___________ - Brought

Fill in the blanks with the past simple form of the verb in parentheses.

1. A mosquito ___________ (bite) me!
2. Grandpa ___________ (catch) eight fish on our fishing trip.
3. When Whitney stepped in the gum, her flip-flop ___________ (stick) to it.
4. They ___________ (wake) up at 4:30 a.m. to catch their 7:00 flight.
5. We ___________ (fly) from New York to Atlanta for the conference last month.
6. My stomach ___________ (feel) strange for hours after I ate that old bread.
7. Stephanie ___________ (give) her sister a CD for her birthday.
8. Ben and Matt ___________ (make) a movie about a really smart janitor at Harvard.
9. The dog ___________ (dig) a hole in the yard.
10. I stepped in the hole and ___________ (break) my ankle.

Fill in the blanks with the past participle of the verb in parentheses.

1. Have you ___________ (see) my keys? I can’t find them anywhere.
2. I have never ___________ (be) to New Orleans.
3. We hadn’t ___________ (grow) tomatoes before last summer.
4. Has she ___________ (hold) hands with her new boyfriend yet?
5. Our team hasn’t ___________ (lose) a game yet this season.
6. Have you ever ___________ (meet) a celebrity?
7. Has he ___________ (sell) his car yet?
8. They haven’t ___________ (speak) in years.
9. He hadn’t ___________ (throw) a baseball in ages, but he still remembered how.
10. Have you ___________ (find) your keys yet?

For a little more fun, you can make a word search or cross-word puzzle where the clues are the base form of the verb, and the students have to either find or fill in the past or past participle form.

Medium-Difficulty Irregular Verb Activities

You can make any of the easy activities harder by taking away your students’ irregular verb lists/charts and dictionaries. But these medium activities add an extra challenge to the easy ones.

Fill in the blanks with the past simple form of one of the following verbs: go, be, see, drink, swim, eat, fall, get, blow, hit. Some verbs may be used more than once.

Alicia’s birthday party ___________ a lot of fun. We ___________ all so happy to be together. We ___________ for a walk on the nature trail, where we ___________ a snake! Then we ___________ in the lake. That ___________ fun until Joey ___________ off of the rope swing and ___________ his head. Then we decided to stop swimming, and Alicia opened her gifts. She ___________ lots of great presents. After that, she ___________ out the candles on her cake, and we ___________ cake, ___________ soda and played games until dark.

Fill in the blanks with the past participle of one of the following verbs: see, go, ride, get, throw, be, have, eat, make. Some verbs may be used more than once.

Dear Mom,

Camp has ___________ a blast! This week, I’ve ___________ some cool crafts, ___________ a horse, ___________ kayaking, and ___________ about 30 hot dogs! We’ve ___________ all kinds of snakes and bugs, and I paid Nathan 5 dollars to eat a spider. He’s ___________ up 4 times since then! I think I’ve ___________ the most mosquito bites of all the kids in my cabin. It’s sort of a contest, so I haven’t ___________ using the bug spray you sent. Sorry! I miss you and Dad, but I’ve ___________ so much fun. See you soon!

Love,

Adam

Hard Irregular Verb Activities

You can make any of the easy or medium activities into hard ones by taking away the word bank, taking away the students’ irregular verb lists/charts and dictionaries, and mixing in some regular verbs as well.

If you’re teaching your students to differentiate between past simple and present perfect, an activity like this one is also very challenging:

Fill in the blanks with the verb in parentheses in either past simple or present perfect.

1. I ___________ (see) three movies this week.
2. Rob ___________ (crash) his car last year.
3. We ___________ (live) in California for five years before we ___________ (move) to Oregon in 1999.
4. The Titanic ___________ (sink) in 1912.
5. Eden ___________ (fall) off her bike 3 times this month.
6. ___________ you ever ___________ (have) the chicken pox?
7. I ___________ (not/drink) any coffee yet today.
8. I ___________ (not/drink) any coffee yesterday either.
9. We ___________ (not/go) to Grandma’s house at all this year.

For more practice, check out:

• Activities for Past Tense of Irregular Verbs in ESL
• Speaking Activities for Intermediate ESL ("Whodunit" and "Amnesia" are both great for practicing past tense.)