Teaching Spanish Preterite Conjugations Car Gar Zar Verbs

If you are working on irregular verbs with your Spanish classes then you know several of the preterite of ar verbs in the first person have spelling changes in the preterite tense! Working on the yo form of these Spanish verbs can be tricky with your high school Spanish students, so lets look at some lesson plans, review game options, and ideas for practicing car, gar, and zar preterite verbs!

Why Do Spanish Preterite Conjugations Car Gar Zar Verbs Even Exist?

Let’s be real. Students already feel like they’re juggling flaming grammar balls, and now you tell them some preterite verbs get extra spelling changes? Cue the collective sigh. But don’t worry, Spanish preterite conjugations car gar zar verbs don’t have to be a headache for you or your students.

This group of verbs is all about pronunciation. In the yo form, car verbs change to qué, gar becomes gué, and zar flips to cé. It keeps things sounding just right in Spanish, even if it makes teaching them feel like an extra puzzle. But with the right strategies (and a little humor), your students can master these changes and actually enjoy the process.

Spanish Car Gar Zar Verbs

Let’s start with a list of these infinitive verbs and their Spanish translation. While there are definitely more of these irregular verbs, these are a good start for your middle school or high school Spanish students. This way, they are not overwhelmed and you can begin to introduce them to the pattern of Spanish Preterite Conjugations Car Gar Zar Verbs in a clear and manageable way.

-Car Verbs

• pescar to fish
• practicar to practice
• sacar to take out
• secar to dry

-Zar Verbs

• almorzar to eat lunch
• comenzar to start, to begin (I like to connect this word to “commence” in English to help students with that almost cognate!)
• cruzar to cross
• empezar to start
• organizar to organize
• utilizar to use

-Gar Verbs

• jugar to play
• llegar to arrive
• pagar to pay

Now let’s look at some ways to practice – car, – gar, and – zar verbs in the preterite tense!

Independent Work

Free Blank Verb Conjugation Chart

The simplest option to practice Spanish preterite conjugations car gar zar verbs is with a blank verb chart. Students can complete one or two sides with any verbs you give them. You can provide a bank of options to choose from or fill in the infinitives yourself before making copies for your students. They will write in the correct ending for each of the verb forms in the charts, making this a no-stress way to reinforce their understanding of Spanish preterite conjugations car gar zar verbs in context.

To make it a game, put it on a timer and have them race to finish the conjugation tables. You can also use the blank worksheet for conjugation of Spanish verbs with the Mi Lápiz review game! 

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Maze Games for Spanish Grammar & Spanish Review

Maze games have students answer a series of questions, but they are also trying to find their way to the end of the maze at the same time as they choose the correct answer.

This simple shift makes it into a game more than a worksheet and is a great option to add to your lesson plans for Spanish class. It works especially well when reviewing Spanish Preterite Conjugations Car Gar Zar Verbs, since students are actively engaged while practicing those tricky spelling changes. They also serve as a quick formative assessment for you.

I have two options I like to use with my students. In the first version, students just find their way to the end by choosing the correct conjugation. However, you can also stretch this game for your Spanish students by having them go back through the maze and complete each of the boxes they didn’t use on the path with the correct Spanish Preterite Conjugations Car Gar Zar Verbs.

Each set of maze games includes an interactive digital activity version for distance learning or an easy sub plan, as well as an answer key for you to project and have students self correct!

Click here to check out my blog post with 10 ways to use maze games in class and grab a free version to try.

Sites to Study Verb Conjugations

These websites offer great practice options for your students! Conjuguemos and Quizlet both have built in Spanish conjugation games to play that are a great way to practice. Students choose or write the correct verb form while they play. 

• Conjuguemos
• Quizlet
• Boom Cards

If you’ve never heard of Boom Cards, they’re basically digital interactive task cards. I love how they give students instant feedback as they play! Learn more about them here.

Make Spanish Preterite Conjugations Car Gar Zar Verbs Stick

Instead of just drilling conjugation charts (yawn), try blending in some interactive practice. Think whiteboard races, a relay race to match infinitives and conjugated yo forms, or a round of memory where students flip cards to match the base verb with its correct preterite form.

One favorite activity? Give students example sentences with blanks and a bank of car gar zar verbs. Have them work in pairs to fill them in, then act out the scene. You’ll be amazed how well “yo jugué fútbol” sticks when someone’s pretending to kick a goal.

You can even turn this into a creative writing challenge. Assign students to write a three-sentence story using at least one car, gar, and zar verb in the preterite tense. Bonus points if it includes a llama, a haunted house, or a surprise celebrity guest. This works wonders for retention and keeps the vibe lighthearted.

With a little creativity, your lesson on Spanish preterite conjugations car gar zar verbs will be memorable, engaging, and maybe even your students’ favorite grammar moment of the year.

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Small Group Options to Review

Free Blank Game Boards PDF

This is probably the lowest prep option of the Spanish conjugation games in this list! Print off the blank board game, write in verbs that you want students to use, then just make copies. The list of irregular verbs above is an easy word bank for you!

Students roll a die to move their game piece, then roll for which subject pronoun they’ll conjugate for. Boom! This is one of my favorite print and go activities. It’s also great to have on hand for fast finishers.

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Spoons

Spoons is a trading card game that can get super loud and (if I’m being honest) a little bit violent. The first person to collect all the cards they need races to grab a spoon, but there’s one less than the group needs – a bit like musical chairs!

The last person to grab a spoon is out of the round, so things can get a bit intense as they race to grab. Play this one with verb forms and students grab each form of the verb until they have a whole set! 

El Toro Conjugation Game

El Toro is a fast-paced verb trading game for a small group of students! You can use it to practice any set of verbs you’ve been working on with your students! I tend to pick the most common or most popular verbs in a given tense to work with. Click here to learn how to play. This is one of my students’ favorite fun activities! 

Often once I’ve introduced both Spoons and El Toro I will let students choose between these 2 Spanish conjugation games because they use the same materials. Student choice is a great way to up engagement even more! You could even play one as a review of regular preterite and then the other with irregular – car, – gar, and -zar verbs.

Download the car gar zar set here!

Olla de Oro

Olla de Oro is one of my favorite review games to play with students. It’s a card game where they draw cards from the middle. If they get a gold card, they conjugate it. If they’re correct they keep it. There are a few other “mischief” cards in the deck to keep the game interesting!

You can have them give the English meanings for the verbs as they conjugate, or you can just have them stay in the target language as they’re working. Click here to download the car gar zar verbs set!

Whole Class Review & Practice Ideas

Corre en Círculos

This is one of my favorite Spanish conjugation games! It’s such a great review game to get your students up and moving around the room as they play this scavenger hunt style game. Students read the prompt on the bottom of the page, record their answer on a piece of paper, then move around the room to find the correct answer on the next sheet on the wall and complete the next prompt until they finish the circle.

For this game, I wanted to set it up like a way to review words they might use during weekend chat, so I set it up with yes/no questions for things they may have done! They answer sí o no, then write the yo form and answer the question.

Click here to see 10 ways to play this game with your whole class!

Weekend Chat

Speaking of Weekend Chat, this is one of my favorite ways to incorporate the Spanish preterite into lessons on Mondays, or coming back from a break!

One of the more scaffolded versions simply asks students if they did an activity or not, so you can easily model the preterite tense irregular verbs, or even contrast irregular verbs and the regular ar preterite verbs, or stem-changing verbs in the preterite – whatever you’d like! This is more about gradually introducing the preterite than it is a traditional lesson as students talk about past actions from the weekend.

Click here to learn more about using Weekend Chat in your classes!

​More Spanish Conjugation Games

If you’d like to see more ways to practice Spanish verbs with your middle school and high school Spanish students, check out my blog post here with 16 Spanish conjugation games!

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