How do you form the Perfect past tense in French?

I would explain that this tense is formed using the avoir verb as an auxiliary, followed by the past participle of the action verb in French this tense is made up of two verbs - a compound tense which form the equivalent present perfect and preterite in English. For example, in English when expressing to eat in the past we can say, I ate and I have eaten, which is separate and carries a separate meaning. However in French j'ai mangé holds both meaning. I would go through the students' understanding of the verb avoir so that they can formulate the tense and then go through the endings of the past participles depending on the verb endings and explain the irregulars and the different structure. To ascertain the students' knowledge, I would set them set questions to respond to and then ask them to teach me the tense to prove that they have understood. I would set translations/questions and/or a written task for homework.