Lesson Plans: Past Tenses

Students rank, ask, answer, analyse and make everyday small talk questions, less common questions and unsuitable questions with Past Continuous.

Good and bad everyday questions with the Past Simple tense.

Practising past time expressions speaking game

Students make up false answers to trivia questions with Past Perfect to fool each other with, test each other on their general knowledge, give hints, and analyse the grammar that they just used.

Students play a pairwork warmer cooler guessing game with general knowledge questions about the past, then test each other on the irregular verbs they were just using.

A fun Unreal Past lying game, using a dice to decide the topic and regrets sentence starter, with regrets about the present and past grammar presentation.

Irregular Past Simple verbs with the same vowel sound pron and speaking

Describing how things were invented with narrative tenses, with Technical English vocabulary

Practising narrative tenses with a guessing numbers board game.

Yes/ No Simple Past questions speaking with points for getting positive answers, including typical time expressions with Simple Past sentences.

Typical everyday social English questions with Simple Past review, including typical small talk questions to ask and answer in language classes, and questions for other situations such as before business meetings.

Typical time expressions with narrative tenses personalised speaking game in which students find experiences that they share, including matching times to Past Continuous, Past Perfect, etc.

Have + PP and Past Simple in everyday conversation review, including presentation of the meaning, uses and typical time expressions of those two tenses, and typical small talk questions with classmates and people outside the classroom.

The three pronunciations of -ed pronunciation and speaking practice

Completing sentences with the Past Simple tense games

Present Perfect and Past Simple oral practice on the topic of what people do during festivals and celebrations like eating special food and staying up all night.

Narrative tenses practice through the first time I... and the last time I... mini-presentations and suggested questions in a range of past tenses.

Past tenses for theoretical situations practice through three fun games, all based on typical Unreal Past sentences to complete.

Past and present habits verb forms speaking through a fun personalised guessing game.

General knowledge quiz on changes in place names for fun, interesting and educational practice of used to for talking about the past, also useful for learning place names in English and their pronunciation.

History trivia quiz to present or practise Past Progressive, including an optional grammar presentation contrasting Past Simple and Past Continuous, and a freer speaking stage.