Lesson Plans: Past Tenses

The two meanings of Past Continuous practice

Memory game/ roleplay for past tenses practice, like a business version of the alibi game

Past Simple for business classes pronunciation and speaking

Practising narrative tenses while learning about Xmas

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

Past tenses guessing game for Past Continuous and Past Perfect Simple and Continuous

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

Practising narrative tenses with a guessing numbers board game.

Lying game to practise was/ were + verb+ing, based on the accusations game "Liar"

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.

Talking about the origins of language, and expressions which used to be used and are still okay

Using "used to" to talk about how westernised your country has become

Origins of tech vocab discussion for practice of the past tense "used to"

Talking about unpolitically correct language in the past to practise used to

Students make up wrong options with used to, test each other's general knowledge, then answer grammar presentation questions about the past tense that they have just been using.

Used to to describe UK customs

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.