⏮️ Passé composé CE2: être or avoir, past participles and simple agreements

In CE2 (age 8-9), the passé composé is the tense for telling stories: Hier, j'ai joué au foot, Nous sommes allés à la plage. Your child has been using it in speech for years, but writing it down can be tricky: do you need ai or suis? é or er? Should there be an e at the end, or not?

Good news: in CE2, the passé composé is based on just three rules. Choose the right auxiliary, find the past participle, and make an agreement when the auxiliary is être. Here’s how to explain them simply, with clear examples, a table of key participles, and games to practise together at dinner.

What is the passé composé for?

The passé composé is used to tell about a finished action that happened in the past: Ce matin, j'ai mangé une tartine. Compare this to the present, je mange une tartine, which describes what’s happening now.

Your child will also come across the imparfait, and both tenses are often used in the same story. The imparfait sets the scene or describes a habit, while the passé composé tells what happened: Il pleuvait quand nous sommes sortis. Spotting these tenses in a story helps your child understand the order of events—a skill practised from the very first CE1 reading comprehension exercises.

A tense in two parts: the auxiliary and the past participle

The name of the tense gives you the rule: the passé composé is made up of two words.

• an auxiliary, avoir or être, conjugated in the present;
• the past participle of the verb.

In j'ai chanté, ai is the auxiliary avoir in the present and chanté is the past participle. In elle est partie, est is the auxiliary être and partie is the past participle. To find the verb in the sentence, you need to take both parts together—this is a great chance to review word types with your child.

Everything depends on knowing the present tense of avoir and être by heart:

• avoir: j'ai, tu as, il/elle/on a, nous avons, vous avez, ils/elles ont;
• être: je suis, tu es, il/elle/on est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils/elles sont.

Être or avoir: how do you choose the auxiliary?

The vast majority of verbs use avoir: j'ai mangé, tu as fini, il a pris, nous avons vu. Note that être and avoir themselves use avoir: you say j'ai été malade and j'ai eu peur, never je suis été.

A small group of verbs, often describing movement or a change of state, use être: aller, venir, arriver, partir, entrer, sortir, monter, descendre, tomber, rester, naître, mourir, devenir, revenir, rentrer, retourner.

To help remember them, many teachers draw a house: a character arrives, enters, climbs the stairs, goes down, falls, stays, leaves again… Each arrow in the drawing stands for a verb that uses être.

A tip for later: some of these verbs use avoir when they have a direct object, like j'ai monté les courses or il a sorti le chien. You don’t need to focus on this in CE2, but don’t be surprised if your child asks about it.

Finding the right past participle

Verbs ending in -er: always -é

All verbs ending in -er have a past participle ending in -é: chanter, chanté; jouer, joué; manger, mangé; tomber, tombé. Even aller, which is irregular elsewhere, becomes allé.

A common mistake is to write -er instead of -é. To check, replace the verb with vendre: if il a vendu makes sense, then it’s il a mangé; if il va vendre works, then it’s il va manger.

Verbs like finir: -i

Verbs like finir have a past participle ending in -i: fini, choisi, grandi, réussi. This is also true for partir (parti), sortir (sorti) and dormir (dormi).

Common verbs to learn by heart

For past participles ending in a silent letter (fait, dit, pris, mis, écrit), a handy trick is to put them in the feminine: une tarte faite, une phrase dite, une place prise, une table mise, une lettre écrite. The letter you hear in the feminine is the one that's hidden in the masculine form.

Agreement with être: just like an adjective

With the auxiliary être, the past participle agrees with the subject, just like an adjective:

• Léo est parti. Léa est partie.
• Les garçons sont partis. Les filles sont parties.
• Léo et Léa sont partis: for a mixed group, use the masculine plural.

When your daughter writes « je suis allée », she adds an e because je refers to her. This is often the moment it clicks: the participle 'agrees' with the subject.

With avoir, however, the participle does not agree with the subject: « Léa a joué », « Les filles ont joué », with no e or s. There is a case where agreement happens with avoir, when the direct object comes before the verb, but that's covered later; if you need more details, our article on past participle agreement with avoir explains it step by step.

Common mistakes and a quick practice for tonight

1. “J'ai tombé.” Very common in children's speech. Tomber is one of the verbs that use être: « je suis tombé ».
2. Forgetting the auxiliary. « Hier je joué »: something's missing. Reading aloud helps spot the gap.
3. Writing -er instead of -é. The vendre test sorts this out in seconds.
4. Agreeing with avoir. « Elles ont jouées »: no agreement with the subject when the auxiliary is avoir.
5. Forgetting agreement with être. « Ma sœur est venu »: the subject is feminine, so it should be venue.

The best practice happens at the dinner table. At dinner, everyone shares three things they did that day, using the passé composé: « J'ai joué à la balle au prisonnier », « Je suis allé à la bibliothèque », « J'ai mangé des lentilles ». Parents join in too, and sometimes make mistakes on purpose—children love to correct them! Afterwards, your child can write one or two sentences in a little notebook, checking the auxiliary and agreement.

For extra practice, our printable CE2 (age 8-9) exercises offer short activities on conjugation and other topics for the year.