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I was so busy yesterday A1

I was so busy yesterday A1

  • Level: A1
  • Topic: Activities in the past
  • Learning Outcome: Can talk about past actions.
  • Grammar: Past Simple (regular verbs)
Key Language:

Past actions: started, cooked, played, walked, love, stayed, jumped, visited, opened, saved

Mandy is bored at home. Lisa goes to the zoo and sees cute panda cubs. Will has a fun day with his friend Mike, playing computer games and eating at a new restaurant. But wait! Mike doesn’t have a dog?

Transcript

I was so busy yesterday_Transcript
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Aim of Activity

10 - 15 minutes

To check learners’ understanding of the video. 

Steps for Students

  1. Work in pairs or small groups. 
  2. Click the blue arrow to listen to the questions about the video. 
  3. Talk to your partner and choose the correct answer. 
  1. Put learners in pairs or groups. 
  2. Share the task with the learners. 
  3. Ask the learners to listen to and answer seven questions about the video. 
  4. Check the answers with the whole class. 

 

Face-to-face class:  

  • Use a projector to do the task as a whole class activity OR 
  • Provide tablets for groups of learners to do the task in groups 

 

Online lesson: 

  • Use a computer to share the task online (by clicking the link: ACTIVITY 1)

 

TIP!

  • If needed, watch the video again. 
  • Note that to move to the next question, the learners need to click the correct answer if their first choice was incorrect.  
  • To make the activity more communicative, encourage the learners to discuss the answers before clicking the answers. 
  • In an online class, learners can share their answers in the chatroom before the teacher reveals the answer on the screen. 
  • At feedback stage, the teacher can read the questions again and discuss the answers with the whole class. 
  1. Who was at home yesterday? (Mandy and Mike) 
  2. What did Mandy do in the kitchen? (She cooked lunch.) 
  3. Where did Lisa go yesterday? (She went to the zoo.) 
  4. When did the Italian restaurant open? (It opened last week.) 
  5. How many dogs has Mike got? (He hasn’t got a dog.) 
  6. Where was Mike yesterday? (He was at home.) 
  7. Is Will’s story true? (No, it isn’t.) 

Aim of Activity

10 - 20 minutes

To provide learners with controlled practice of recognising irregular past verb forms. 

Steps for Students

1: Open this link ACTIVITY 2
2: Click start
3: Hit the moles that say words in past simple by clicking on them
4: Avoid clicking on moles that say words in present tense

  1. Put learners in pairs or groups. 
  2. Use a computer or a projector to show the learners the task: ACTIVITY 2
  3. Teach the learners that the animals they can see are called moles. 
  4. Ask the learners to click the moles that are Past Simple. 
  5. Check the answers with the whole class. 

 

Verbs in the task: 

be/was-were, buy/bought, come/came, do/did, drink/drank, eat/ate, fall/fell, get/got, go/went, have/had, know/knew, leave/left, make/made,sleep/slept, spend/spent, take/took, swim/swam, tell/told, understand/understood, wake/woke, write/wrote 

 

TIP!

  • Demonstrate the activity, by doing the first example together with the learners. 
  • During the activity, set the learners a time limit (e.g. 5 minutes) to play the game. 
  • After the doing the activity online: 
    1. The learners can be asked to list the base form and past form of the irregular verbs they remember from the task in writing.  
    2. This can be done as pair or small group work in the form of a competition to find out who remembers most verb forms. 
    3. The learners can be asked to formulate and say as many sentences as they can using the irregular past verb forms from the activity. A time limit of e.g., 3 minutes can be set for the activity. 
  • Note that it is possible to switch templates using the same content by clicking one of the templates (e.g. Airplane) on the right of the screen. 

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Aim of Activity

15 - 20 minutes

To provide learners with freer practice of the Past Simple in the context of talking about an interesting day.  

Steps for Students

  1. Work in pairs. 
  2. Think about an interesting day in your life. 
  3. Look at the questions and make some notes. 
  4. Talk in pairs. 
  1. Put learners in pairs. 
  2. Share the task with the learners. 
  3. Demonstrate the activity: the learners ask the teacher the questions. 
  4. Give the learners some time (e.g. 3 minutes) to think about an interesting day and generate ideas. 
  5. Ask the learners to take it in turns to ask and answer the questions. 
  6. Check the activity with the whole class. 

 

Face-to-face class: 

  • print the worksheet for learners or project it on an interactive whiteboard 

 

Online class: 

  • share worksheet on the screen of the teacher’s computer OR 
  • share the worksheet with individual students e.g. on a Google sheet 

 

TIP!

  • Before the activity, demonstrate the task by asking learners to ask the teacher the questions on the worksheet. 
  • During the activity, monitor the learners and take notes of common errors for error correction right after the activity or at the beginning of the next lesson. 
  • After the activity, the teacher can nominate some of the learners so they can share with the class what they have learnt about their partner. 
  • As a follow-up activity, learners can write about their partner’s interesting day. 

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Activity attachment

I was so busy yesterday A1 – Activity 3
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Aim of Activity

10 - 15 minutes

To sensitise learners to the pronunciation of verbs ending in-ed. 

Steps for Students

  1. Look at the verbs from the video.

  2. Divide the verbs into three groups. Do you hear /t/, /d/ or /ɪd/?

  3. Listen to the recording and check your answers.

  4. Listen to the recording and repeat what you hear. 
  1. Show the learners three words: cooked, loved, started
  2. Pronounce the verbs and ask if the learners can hear the difference in how the –ed ending is pronounced. Point out the difference:
                    /t/           /d/           /ɪd/
            cooked      loved      started
  3. Share the task with the learners.
  4. Ask the learners to group the remaining verbs. 
  5. Play the recording so the learners can check their answers and make corrections if needed. 

     

  6. Play the recording again and ask the learners to repeat what they hear.
  7. Optional: Ask the learners if they can add more verbs to the three groups. 
  8. Use a computer or a projector to show the learners the task: ACTIVITY 4

TIP!

  • Demonstrate the activity by doing the first example together – cooked, loved, started 
  • Then let the learners do the activity by themselves working individually on their mobile devices, in pairs or small groups on  tablets or as a whole class using an interactive whiteboard. 
  • Allow learners time to check answers in pair or cross check between small groups before whole class feedback. 

/t/ – cooked, jumped, walked (+ washed, watched, looked) 

/d/ – loved, opened, played, saved, stayed (+ closed, called, cleaned) 

/ɪd/ – started, visited (+ needed, decided) 

Aim of Activity

10 minutes

To provide learners controlled practice of was / were. 

Steps for Students

  1. Work in pairs, small groups or as a whole class. 
  2. Go to www.kahoot.com
  3. Log in / sign up for a free Kahoot! account
  4. Enter the Game PIN you see on your teacher’s computer screen. 
  5. Choose your game name. 
  6. Look at the pictures and choose the best answer that describes the picture. 
  7. Ask and answer your classmates the last question. 
  1. Put the learners in pairs or small groups or use the activity as a whole class activity (as a Team/one player). 
  2. Create a free account with Kahoot or log in if you are already a member
  3. Use a computer or a projector to show the learners the task (by clicking the link: ACTIVITY 5
  4. Play the game as a ‘Guest’. – To move from one question to the other, click ‘NEXT’ in the top  right-hand corner of the screen. 
  5. Learners will need another computer, mobile phone or tablet.
  6. Learners can enter the game from the second device by going to the Kahoot website (https://kahoot.it) and entering the Game PIN (displayed on the teacher’s screen).
  7. The class can play as teams if there are enough tablets or mobile phones for small groups of learners. 
  8.  Ask learners to ask and answer 3-4 of their classmates the last question in the activity and report to the teacher what they have learnt about each other. 

TIP!

  • Allow learners time to cross check answers between pairs or small groups before whole class feedback. 
  • After doing the activity, learners can be asked to say or write as many sentences as they remember from the activity. 
  1. Yesterday he was at an Italian restaurant. 
  2. Yesterday they weren’t at the park. 
  3. Yesterday they weren’t at school. 
  4. She was at the pool with her family. 
  5. They were in a tree. 
  6. He was in bed yesterday. 
  7. He wasn’t at home yesterday. 
  8. He was at the supermarket yesterday. 
  9. She wasn’t at the hairdresser’s yesterday. 
  10. Where were you yesterday? 

The BOOST Project (Building Open Online Series for Teaching) aims to improve the digital readiness of teachers of English as a foreign language to students aged 8 -14 by providing an open-access series of engaging native-speaker content videos linked with a Resource Pack of ready-made activities to stimulate production of the language in online learning.

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