Parent tip: Erratic verb tense and your child’s wild mind
The process of teaching kids to write means stepping into wild minds, and part of what we often find in their heads is inconsistent use of verb tenses. You can see this problem below in an excerpt from the first draft of one of our Level 2 students.
Here's the part that is probably going to empty out both my brain and tool shed. I have to build more than 100 different robots for every special community or organization. I felt like a little over 100 different robots was the necessary amount for each community, not too big and not too small. I would also have to count them to make sure there's enough of them. But before I do that, I need to think up of all the important communities my country needs.
There are interesting developments in this child’s story, but they’re hard to track because the child’s sense of time jumps around. Are we in the present? The past? The future? It’s not clear that the kid knows. At June Writers, we see this issue a lot, particularly as kids begin to write longer texts.
June Writers appreciates what erratic verb tenses say about kids. The act of teaching kids to form coherent arguments involves coaxing ideas out of wild young brains excited about the world. These kids do live in many time dimensions at once, moving from interest to interest as their hungry young minds try to do and see everything. We want them to hold on to that wild mind. We just also want them to have the skills to share what’s going on in their heads with the rest of the world. Hence, working on making verb tenses consistent in their writing.
June Writers works with kids on this skill in many ways, including a dedicated lesson on chronological versus non-chronological argument organization in Level 2 and a lesson on fuzzy verb tenses in Level 4. But if you aren’t yet a June Writers member, and you clock the problem in your child’s writing at school, you can help your child notice the issue—the first step in solving it—using simple conversations at home. Try this:
You: Do you remember where you need to go after school today?
Child: I’m going to soccer, so I should walk to the park.
You: Yup! Hey, wouldn’t it be strange if you had said, “I was going to go to soccer, so I should walk to the park”?
Child: Uh, yeah …
You: That’s called a weird mix of verb tenses. A verb tense is when the action word of your sentence happens in time: past, present, future. It’s hard to understand what people mean when their verb tenses change at weird times.
Child: OK, fine. Can we get ice cream?
You: In the future, right? Not the past?
Child: Mom …
You: Yes, we can get ice cream in the unspecified future.
Child: Mom!
You: See? Time matters when you say or write words.
Child: Fine! Can I get ice cream after soccer practice?
[Choose your own ending.]
Of course, you should adapt this approach to suit your unique relationship with your child. But you can see how pointing out the role of verb tense in an ordinary situation can be the beginning of your child’s ability to recognize the issue. That said, if conversations like the above don’t yield immediate change, don’t panic. Change comes gradually and with repeated attention to the issue. If you’re reviewing your child’s schoolwork and you notice issues, highlight the problems and ask your child if their text takes place in the past, present, or future. Then ask them if the confusing sentences fit in that time structure. Rinse and repeat. We also highly recommend editing exercises where your child has to edit messy, confusing texts. These types of practices force kids to slow down and feel their own sense of annoyance when a text doesn’t follow logical time narratives. Remember, kids who don’t mind the smell of bad breath are less likely to understand why we brush our teeth to reduce bad breath.
Kids naturally bend space and time with their minds. We help them bring us along on the journey without losing track of time.
