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Christina Freeman-Canavan IST 501 and IST 511 Professors Wisdom and Challenger September 30, 2013 Script for Prezi Audience: 6th Grade Students Purpose: When my students write, I see many writing mechanic errors. The three most common are: punctuation, capitalization, and verb tense. This lesson focuses on verb tense. The papers I read fluctuate between past and present tense. Even after self and peer edits, this is an error that continuously gets overlooked. I want my students to understand that moving from tense to tense can be very confusing (WC 2010). So, I decided to create a lesson to help students understand verb tense. Frame 1 Hi. Today we are going to be discussing verb tenses. Frame 2 Weve learned in a previous lesson that every sentence needs a subject and a verb. The subject is who the sentence is about and the verb is what the subject is doing. The verb tells us what action is taking place. Verb tense tells us when the action is happening. Verb tense is related to time. Today you will be learning about verb tense in this video lecture Prezi. Frame 3 Verb tense answers one of the following questions: 1) Did it already happen? Past tense 2) Is it happening now? Present tense 3) When will it happen? Future tense. Lets take a look at these three sentences:

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Sarah plays soccer. This sentence is written in the present tense. When is Sarah playing soccer? Shes playing it now. Present tense. Sarah played soccer yesterday. This sentence is written in the past tense. When did Sarah play soccer? She played it yesterday. Past tense. Sarah will play soccer tomorrow. This sentence is written in the future tense. When will Sarah play soccer? She will play it tomorrow. Future tense. Frame 4 When you are writing paragraphs and essays, its very important that you are consistent with your verb tense. Whatever tense you begin with, make sure you continue it throughout the entire paper. When you edit your papers, be sure to look for verb tense errors. Frame 5 Now, lets take a look at an example: Last Christmas was a holiday I will never forget. I was still asleep when my brother comes in to wake me up. He begs me to take him downstairs to see what presents we got. So, we went downstairs and it was then I realized that I got the bike I had wanted! When I take a closer look at the first sentence, I see that the event the story is describing already happened. How do I know? Lets look at the context clues. The first two words are: Last Christmas. So, I know that the entire writing piece should be written in the past tense. Verbs written in past tense typically end in ed. So, lets take a look at the rest of the paragraph. Last Christmas was a holiday I will never forget. Was is the verb and it is written in the past tense. I was still asleep when my brother comes in to wake me up. Here we have a verb tense issue. The beginning of the sentence uses was which is correct, but then the author writes my

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brother comes in which denotes present tense. The correct form should be came; my brother came in to wake me up. Lets continue: He begs me to take him downstairs to see what presents we got. Again, begs is written in present tense and should be begged. He begged me to take him downstairs to see what presents we got. The rest of the paragraph is in the correct past tense. So, we went downstairs and it was then I realized that I got the bike I had wanted!

Frame 6 Lets review. Every sentence needs a subject and a verb, or else its not a complete sentence. And when you are writing as essay, narrative, or paragraph, the verbs need to be in the correct tense. Be consistent. You can go onto my website at www.mscanavan.com for other writing resources. Frame 7 Heres a list of my references. References Emslie, P. (2009) Image. Retrieved September 30, 2013, from https://www.driveredtogo.com/member/login.aspx Sequence of Tenses. Purdue OWL. Retrieved September 30, 2013, from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource Writers Web. (2010) University of Richmond Writing Center. Retrieved September 30, 2013, from http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/litpres.html Wisdom, K. (2013) Week 5 Powerpoint Video Lecture. Retrieved September 30, 2013 from https://ilearn.csumb.edu/course/view.php?id=4176