Resource 5: Past Simple for adults

The following are some activities that we can do in our classrooms for adults to learn the past simple through interaction. These activities have been retrieved from BusyTeacher.org

1. 1

   Charade Series

   In an activity similar to charades, have your students describe the steps in a process after their classmate acts it out. Have one student pantomime an activity like brushing his teeth or writing and mailing a letter. Once the charade is over, have your students describe each step in the process using the simple past.
2. 2

   Dear Diary

   Writing about their day is a good way for your students to practice the written form of the simple past. Have students write about what they did yesterday paying particular attention to transitions of time (next, then, after that, finally, etc.)
3. 3

   Accurate Endings

   Don’t skip pronunciation when you are working on the simple past. Though regular verbs will take the –ed ending to show they occurred in the past, -ed will not be pronounced the same for every word. Brainstorm a list of regular verbs and then have your students sort them into two groups. The past pronunciation of one group sounds like [d] and the other like [t]. Challenge your students to articulate the rule which determines which pronunciation to use.
4. 4

   Preparations

   Have groups of students talk about a significant accomplishment in their lives. After sharing the accomplishment, ask each person to describe what she did leading up to the event. For example, if she graduated college, she studied, took the appropriate classes and filled out her school’s paperwork.
5. 5

   Double Duty Review

   How much do your students remember from class yesterday? Find out by asking them to tell you what you did in class yesterday using the simple past. If the majority of your class travelled overseas to study English, have them share what they did before they came to the U.S.
6. 6

   Good and Bad Days

   Have pairs of students ask each other questions and give answers about a day in the past. For example, one student might ask, “Did you spill your coffee yesterday?” The other would answer, “No, I didn’t spill my coffee yesterday.” This is a great way to practice questions and negative use of the simple past.
7. 7

   Get Out and About

Take a short walk outside your school, and have students take notes on what they observe. When you come back to the classroom, have your students share what they experienced on the walk using the simple past.

REFERENCE:

BusyTeacher. Retrieved on November 6, 2015 from http://busyteacher.org/13649-teaching-simple-past-7-simple-activities.html

Why this resource is appropriate for adults:

These activities are great for adults because they can put into practice the simple past through interaction and engagement. Adults learn from interacting with the peers, working in pairs and groups, and they are not going to be boring as often happens with this topic. They have the opportunity to act out! Something that enhances language learning and motivates learners. They also will receive feedback from the teacher and peers regarding the pronunciation and sentence structure as well. Obviously those activities are to be performed in a classroom in the practice or production stage. 

Resource 4: Past Simple for Teenagers

Using games as a teaching strategy is fun and easy and teenagers like it! The game is known as "The Big Cheese". It will help students learn and develop the skills through listening and identifying verbs in a sentence. Also, this game will give enough practice of past tense verbs, facilitate quick memorization and give students the opportunity to write the irregular verbs in the past tense and pronounce sentences.

This game is designed for a 45 minute class. You'll need about 20 irregular verbs. Make your own list to customize this game and adapt it to your plan or lesson. Students need a pen and paper, and the teacher needs a blackboard and a marker or chalk.

Divide the class into groups of two-four students, depending on the class size. Students must choose a name for the team and write it on the board. They should choose a team leader. This person will be designated to take the paper to the teacher in order to check the answer.

Ask students to take a piece of paper and a pencil or pen. Write an example on the board so that your students understand how to play and a list of irregular verbs with their times. Read the sentence three times in the present tense, high, slowly and clearly. Students have to write it again one last time, using the correct form and spelling of irregular verb in the past tense.

To earn points students must take their exercise to the teacher and check their answer. If the exercise is complete and correct, the student will mark a point on the board, will write the correct sentence on the board and continue to the next round. The winning team will have the most points and "The Big Cheese" will be announced.

REFERENCE:

Juego de Verbos. eHOW en español. Obtenido de http://www.ehowenespanol.com/juegos-verbos-pasado-simple-estudiantes-ingles-segunda-lengua-manera_440787/

Why this resource is appropriate for teenagers?

This teaching activity is appropriate  for teens  because provides practice and help them to recognize the different structures of the simple past and they can check knowledge when the teacher provides feedback. This activity motivates teens to learn because they love to learn through games and different activities that are not boring at all.

  

Resource 3: Past Simple for Teenagers

Possible context:  Students between 14-17 years old.

Aim: Learning the use of the past simple, the rules and how to build sentences with it.

What students will need to know about the Past Simple tense includes:

Irregular forms,

Spelling of regular forms

Use of the auxiliary “did” in question formation, negatives and short answer.

Activities to carry out in the classroom:

As teachers we can do interesting activities to teach teenagers the simple past

Storytelling

We often use present tenses and other past tenses such as Past Continuous to give our anecdotes a bit of colour, but it is perfectly possible to construct a simple linear story with just the Simple Past. Perhaps the easiest way to prompt storytelling is to give groups of students a set of cards to make a story from, with each card being a word, phrase or picture. To practise the regular and/or irregular verb forms, those cards could be verbs in the infinitive.

 

Guess my life

Students can also do something similar with actions that they did outside the classroom. In one version, students say an action they did yesterday or this morning and the other students try to make true sentences including the time, e.g. “You brushed your teeth at 7:30”. The person whose action it is gives hints like “No, much later” until their partners get it exactly right. You can also do it the other way round by one student giving the time and the others trying to guess what they did at that time. You can also do similar things with months and years, e.g. “You lived in England in 2000”.

Another possibility is to tell the story of someone’s day or life in order. In groups of three or four, one person has his or her story told and corrects the other people if they say something which isn’t true. One person says “You got up” and the next person continues with anything that happened soon (but not necessarily just) after that, e.g. “You made a cup of coffee”. They can continue that way through the whole day or stop whenever someone makes a mistake and switch roles.

 

Past tense mistakes

In groups, have students write past tense sentences about anything they want on separate pieces of paper - but they have to make a mistake when writing the verb (most Students will really enjoy being allowed to make a mistake on purpose!). For example, "Last week I eated curry for breakfast everyday" (Encourage crazy situations to make it fun). After writing some sentences on different pieces of paper have the Students swap papers with other groups and make corrections.

 

Yesterday I went to…

This is a chain game, like the game "I went to the market and bought ___". T sits in a circle with the Students. The T starts by saying "Yesterday, I went to the supermarket and bought some bread". Then Student 2 will have to repeat that sentence and add his/her own, e.g. "Yesterday, I went to the supermarket and bought some bread, then I went to the movie theater and watched a movie". Then Student 3 repeats these two sentences and add his/her own e.g. "Yesterday, I went to the supermarket and bought some bread, then I went to the movie theater and watched a movie, then I went to a cafe and drank a Coke",etc. If a student forgets something he/she sits out that round.

Yesterday Time Guess

12 small squares of paper write down key hourly times (e.g. 6am, 7am, 12pm, 4pm, 6 pm, etc.). Also include a few "wild cards" with a question mark written on them. Fold the squares of paper and put into a small box. Students sit around the box and take turns on taking out a piece of paper. They have to make a sentence based on what they did yesterday using the structure, "Yesterday, I was ___ing at ___ o'clock" (E.g. Yesterday, I was sleeping at 6 o'clock in the morning, Yesterday, I was eating dinner at 6 o'clock in the evening, etc.). If a student picks a wild card they can make a sentence about any time of the day. If the student makes a perfect sentence they keep the piece of paper, if not it goes back into the box. The person with the most pieces of paper at the end is the winner.

 

References:

 Ideas, descriptions and exercises were taken from:

http://edition.tefl.net/ideas/grammar/fun-practice-simple-past/

http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/how-to-teach-past-simple-tense.html

http://www.eslkidstuff.com/esl-kids-games/past-tense-games.htm#.VjwG3bcvfIU

Resource 2: Past Simple for Teenagers

             Ames836. Past Simple: English Language. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWZ6cNq6bEY

               Kulek, Mark. Past Tense Verbs | Easy English Conversation Practice | ESL. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghOQvAi3ZtQ

Podemos utilizar el siguiente recurso para que los estudiantes memoricen verbos irregulares de una manera divertida y mejorar tu conocimiento.

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/verb_wheel/

Why this resource is appropriate for teenagers?

The simple past tense is one of the most used in the English language, this resource is appropriate because it uses a combination of the different learning styles that teens might have. This resource has videos (for visual learners) and text (for logical learners). It also has different resources to learn regular and irregular verbs which are the mainstay of this tense. These different resources help to motivate and capture teenager´s attention and also encourages to self-learning and promotes autonomy when learning through virtual spaces like this blog.

References

Verb conjugator. Macmillandictionary. Retrieved from http://www.macmillandictionary.com/verb_wheel/

Kulek, Mark. Past Tense Verbs | Easy English Conversation Practice | ESL. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghOQvAi3ZtQ

Ames836. Past Simple: English Language. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWZ6cNq6bEY

Curtis, A. Simple Past Tense. Book 5A New Welcome to English (Second Edition). Retrieved on November 6, 2015 from http://slideplayer.com/slide/699725/

Resource 1: Past Simple for Adults

Past Simple: Grammatical Rules (Reglas gramaticales)

Modo afirmativo, interrogativo y negativo

Pronunciation

Elemental English. (2013) Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j32SurxnE4s

Let´s review! After students learn the rules of the past simple, they can be able to make the following crossword to strengthen knowledge ! REFERENCE: Ammie. (2010) Past Simple. Retrieved on November 6, 2015 from http://www.slideshare.net/AmMieHUSO/past-simple-tense-4773250 Elemental English. (2013) Retrieved on November 6, 2015 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j32SurxnE4s ESL printables. Past Simple Crosswords worksheets. Retrieved on November 6, 2015 from http://www.eslprintables.com/grammar_worksheets/verbs/verb_tenses/past_simple_crossword/ Past Simple (2013). Retrieved on November 6, 2015 from http://foroparalelo.com/idiomas/past-simple-pasado-simple-and-past-contiuous-pasado-continuo-316096/ Why this resource is appropriate for adults? It is appropriate for adults since adults prefer to know the rules of the language and understand the reasons of these rules. In this resource they are learning grammar directly and seeing in context the examples to understand the variations of the past simple and the pronunciation. It would be complicated with younger learners and teens because they learn this rules better through carrying out engaging activities and games in which they can notice the variations and patterns of the past simple. On the contrary, adults like to visualize the rules and these variations explicitly. However, as teachers we should avoid the excessive use of text, that´s why these resources combine images, text and videos to vary the information that can be assimilated by this population. These resources work best with students of virtual environments.