How many… did…? Trivia Quiz Irregular Past Simple practice
A LESSON PLAN FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS
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.
By: Alex Case
Level:
Intermediate
Theme:
General
Study Area:
Past Tenses
Page: /
Lesson Plan Content:
How many… did…? trivia quiz
irregular Past Simple practice
Ask your partner one of the questions on your worksheet, listen to their answer, then give them hints like “It’s a lot more”, “It’s quite a lot less” and “It’s a little higher” until they guess exactly the right number. All guesses must be in full sentences, including the right Past Simple form of the verb, but the wording doesn’t have to be the same as on your worksheet. Then take turns doing this and guessing your partner’s numbers in the same way.
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Useful language for giving hints |
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(That’s close but) |
it’s the real number is it’s actually |
a lot/ much/ far quite a lot slightly/ a little/ a bit very slightly/ a tiny bit |
more/ higher/ longer. less/ lower/ shorter. |
Ask about any numbers, sentences, etc you couldn’t understand.
Test each other on the Past Simple verbs by:
- reading out mixed past forms (from the answer) and infinitives (from the question) and seeing if your partner can repeat back just the past form
- reading out the past form (from the answer) and seeing if your partner can say the infinitive form (from the question)
- reading out the infinitive (from the question) and seeing if your partner can say the past form
Student A
- How many times did Charlie bite his brother’s finger in the famous viral YouTube video? He bit it twice.
- How many of the little pigs’ houses did the big bad wolf blow down? He blew down two.
- How many bones did stunt motorcyclist Evel Knievel break up to the end of 1975? He broke four hundred and thirty three.
- How many hours did Alabama’s Shelby County Habitat for Humanity build a house in to break the world record in 2002? They built it in three hours and twenty six minutes.
- How many Picasso paintings did Peggy Guggenheim buy in 1939? She bought ten.
- How many players did Indian cricketer Rahul Dravid catch out in his career? He caught out two hundred and ten.
- How many kilometres of tunnels did the Vietnamese dig at Củ Chi near Ho Chi Minh City during the Vietnamese War? They dug 121 kilometres.
- How many pages did Leonardo da Vinci draw and write on in his notebooks? He drew and wrote on twenty thousand.
- How many beers did wrestler Andre the Giant drink in one bar in Pittsburgh? He drank a hundred and twenty seven.
- How many kilometres did the Solar Car Project drive around the world to break the world record? It drove (about) thirty thousand kilometres.
- How many hot dogs did Joey Chestnut eat in ten minutes in 2018 to break the world record? He ate seventy four.
- How many kilometres did Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic fall from a plane without a parachute and survive in 1972? She fell ten kilometres.
- How many times did the Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first plane fly? It flew four times.
- How many roses did the Ross give Emily in the American sitcom Friends? He gave her seventy two.
- How many enormous turnips did the old man grow in the kid’s story? He grew one.
- How many homeruns did Babe Ruth hit? He hit seven hundred and fourteen.
- How many tons of rubbish did the Collyer brothers keep in their house in Harlem, New York in the 1940s? They kept a hundred and eighty tons.
- How many fireworks did they light in Norway in 2014 to break the world record? They lit (about) five hundred and forty thousand fireworks.
- How many matches did the Philadelphia 76ers NBA basketball team lose in a row between 2014 and 2016? They lost twenty eight (in a row).
- How many dollars did the superhero movie Avengers: Endgame make in its opening weekend in 2019? It made one point two billion dollars.
- How many Xmas lights did the Gay family of New York state put up on their home in 2014 to break the world record? They put up about six hundred thousand.
- How long did they read aloud for at the Dr Martin Luther King Library in August 2003 to break the world record? They read for about seventy five hours.
- How many times did Rod Serling say “Submitted for your approval,…” at the beginning of the TV series Twilight Zone? He said it three times.
- How many paintings did Vincent Van Gogh sell in his lifetime? He sold one.
Student B
- How many times did the LZ 129 Hindenburg airship fly before it was destroyed in the famous fire and crash in 1937? It flew sixty three times.
- How many Royal Ascot winners did the jockey Lester Pigott ride? He rode 116.
- How many points did the Dow Jones Average stock exchange index rise on 24 March 2020? It rose two thousand one hundred and twelve points.
- How many kilometres did Dean Karnazes run without stopping from October 12th to October 15th 2005? He ran five hundred and sixty kilometres.
- How many times did Robot B-9 say “Danger, Will Robinson” in the TV series Lost in Space? It said it once.
- How many rhinos did Albrecht Dürer see before he made his famous woodcut picture of a rhinoceros in 1515? He saw zero.
- How many cars did the Guinness Book of Records’ record-breaking salesman Joe Girard sell in his best month? He sold one hundred and seventy four.
- How many texts did Fred Lidgren send in one month to break the world record? He sent about five hundred and seventy thousand.
- How many metres did American Leo Clouser shoot a rubber band to break the world record on 18 June 1999? He shot it thirty metres.
- How many times did the Beatles sing Get Back during their 1969 rooftop concert? They sang it three times.
- How many battleships did the Japanese sink in their 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour? They sank four.
- How many hours did Belgian Jimmy De Frenne sit on a toilet to try to beat the world record before he gave up? He sat on it for a hundred and sixteen hours.
- How many years did Rip Van Winkle sleep for? He slept for twenty years.
- How many languages did the British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton speak? He spoke twenty four.
- How many paintings did robbers steal from Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1972? They stole eighteen.
- How many kilometres did Matthew Webb swim to cross the English Channel that way for the first time in 1875? He swam sixty six kilometres.
- How many bags of trash did they take out of the house of former US First Lady Jackie Onassis’s hoarder cousins’ house? They took out a thousand.
- How many students did Thomas Bug and Bastian Sick teach to break the world record on 13 March 2006? They taught six thousand two hundred and eighty seven.
- How many car license plates did strongman Bill Clark tear in half in one minute to break the world record? He tore apart twenty three.
- How many times did MLB baseball pitchers throw no hitters in 2019? They threw no hitters eight times.
- How many times did Bill Murray’s character wake up on the same Groundhog Day on screen in the 1993 movie? He woke up thirty six times on the same day.
- How many caps did the hat seller wear in the kids book Caps for Sale? He wore 17.
- How many MLB Baseball World Series championships did Yogi Berra win? He won 10.
- How many complete novels did Charles Dickens write? He wrote fourteen.
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