How do I form the past tense?

There are various ways to express the past tense in French, the easiest one, and the one required at a basic level, is the perfect tense (passé composé). First we have to learn how to conjugate the present form of the verb avoir, this should be one of the first conjugations learnt. (J'ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont).We then have to know how to form the past participle of a verb. Generally, we remove the -er from verbs ending in -er and add -é (e.g. jouer goes to joué); we remove the -re from verbs ending in -re and add -u (e.g. vendre goes to vendu); finally, we remover the -r from verbs ending in -ir (e.g. finir goes to fini).We then use the conjugated present avoir form and add the past participle of any verb to it, as we do in English.E.g. I have played football is J'ai joué au foot. However, some verbs use être instead of avoir to form the past tense. We can remember which verbs these are through the acronym MRS VANDETRAMP (mourir, rendre, sortir, venir, aller, naître, devenir, entrer, tomber, rester, arriver, monster, partir).E.g. I have arrived at school is Je suis arrivé(e) à l'école.