The passive voice

Take a look at this sentence:

Christopher Columbus

discovered

America

in 1492.

When you have a sentence with a verb followed by an object, and you want
to give more importance to the object than to the subject, you can use
the passive voice so that object goes at the beginning of the sentence:
America

was

discovered

by Christopher Columbus

in 1492.

As you see, when a sentence in the active voice has this structure:
subject

verb

object

Changing it into the passive voice is very easy. We put the object at the
beginning of the sentence, then the verb divides in two parts: first we use
the verb to be, in the same verb tense as the verb in the active voice,
and then we use the past participle of that verb. If we want to say who
did the action represented by the verb (the subject in the active voice), we
put it at the end, following by.
object

be

past participle

by + subject

Remember!
The verb to be always goes in the same verb tense as the verb in the active
voice. In the passive voice, that verb goes always in the past participle.
For example, in this sentence the verb is in the future, and the verb to be
also goes in the future in the passive voice:
My sister
A new notebook

will buy
will be
be

bought

a new notebook
by my sister