5.

Past simple interview

The students prepare questions before interviewing a partner on a past activity.

Begin the activity by explaining to students that they will be interviewing a classmate about a past event
and practicing asking and answering questions in the past tense.

Select a topic before you begin. Here are some examples:

Embarrassing moment

Cinema

Holiday

First job/day of high school.

Provide the class with a list of prompts or topics that they can use to form questions for their partner.
For example, if you have chosen 'cinema', you could add the following:

1. When / be / last time / go / cinema?

2. film?

3. popcorn?

4. funny? (Using be)

5. scary? (Using be)

6. enjoy?

Elicit the solution to the first question and write it on the board.

Assign partners and give them time to prepare questions using the provided prompts. When the group is
ready, elicit the correct answers for each one before starting the next part of the activity.

In pairs, students will now interview each other about the last time they visited the cinema. Encourage
them to ask follow-up questions and to ask for more details about their partner's past event.
After the interviews, ask each student to share what they learned about their partner.

7. My Wiki

For this fun writing activity, the students create their own Wikipedia page.

Begin the activity by asking students if they have ever read a famous person's Wikipedia page. Elicit the
type of information it contains and write this on the board. For example:

Personal information (name, age, place of birth)

Education (school, college, degrees earned)

Career or job experience

Events

Achievements or awards

Family information

Anecdotes or stories

Explain to students that they will be creating their own Wikipedia page. Encourage them to be as
creative as possible and to include interesting and unique information about themselves.

Give students 10-15 minutes to work on their Wikipedia pages individually. After they have completed
their Wikipedia pages, ask volunteers to share them with the class.

Encourage the students to ask questions and provide feedback on each other's pages.

Remember to review any target grammar and vocabulary used and provide feedback to students on
their use of it.

Tips:

Provide examples of famous people's Wikipedia pages to help students understand the structure and
content of a typical page.
Encourage students to use a variety of verb tenses and descriptive language on their Wikipedia pages.

12. Playtime

For this fun ESL activity idea, students will create a play that another group has to perform.

Begin the activity by splitting the class into two or four groups, depending on class size. Have each group
create a play or movie scene for the other group to act out. Each play should have a character for every
member of the other group.

Now give the students time to work on their plays, and encourage them to make them as funny and
detailed as possible.

After the plays are complete, have each group choose a narrator to explain their story while the other
group performs.

Make sure that each person knows their character name before the play starts, and encourage them to
stay in character throughout the performance.

Encourage the actors to use the appropriate dialogue when responding to the narrator.

Tips:

Rearrange the room to help students create their scenes or stories.

Encourage students to use a variety of past tenses in their dialogue, depending on the context of the
scene or story.

Example story ideas:

A group of friends go camping and encounter a mysterious creature in the woods.

A family goes on a vacation and has a series of misadventures along the way.

A detective solves a crime and catches the thief.

A group of superheroes save the world from an evil villain.

A group of students go on a field trip and have a wild and crazy day.

13. Yesterday's news

A group writing activity where the students have to plan an article detailing a dramatic event.

This activity is from our free lesson plan on past simple and continuous.

Start by telling your students they will work in groups to write a newspaper report on a past event.

Next, get some ideas from the class, and use famous disaster movies for inspiration. Here are a few
simple examples:

Volcanic eruption

Bank robbery

Escaped zoo animals

Alien invasion

Try to elicit the kind of information that they'll need to write the article. Write questions on the board
that you want the report to answer. The following should be sufficient:

What was happening before the event?

What were people doing?

What happened?

How did it begin?

What was happening during the event? - People's reaction

How did it end?

What was happening after?

Confirm that students understand the above questions, and elicit which tense should be used to answer
them.

When all groups are clear on the writing task, they can start to plan and write their articles. Remind
them that their reports should attempt to answer all of the questions from the board.
Once students have had time to prepare, ask a student from each group to share their report with the
class.

Provide feedback to each group, pointing out areas where they did well and areas where they can
improve their use of the target grammar.

17. Fake news!

For this activity, students will create a news broadcast about a real or imaginary event and present it to
the class for feedback.

Begin the activity by discussing recent news events specific to your students' country, and ask the group
to explain what happened.

Add any useful language that comes up during the discussion to the board, such as past tense verbs,
vocabulary, and sentence structures.

Have the students work in groups to create a news broadcast about a real or imaginary event. Encourage
them to lean on language structures and vocabulary from the board.

To make it more fun, encourage students to create funny imaginary news stories. The more ridiculous,
the better!

Once the news broadcasts are ready, have each group nominate a presenter to report the news to the
class.

Finally, remember to review any common errors or areas of difficulty with past tense grammar with the
group.