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What a Story!
The activities below provide fun exercises for the entire class when you have extra time. They are designed to be taught with specific exercises in this unit. Click on an activity in the list below or scroll down the page.
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News headlines
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 2, "Conversation: Storytelling."
Time: 10–15 minutes. This activity involves reading real news stories, which also provides practice with the past tense.
Preparation: From an English-language newspaper or magazine, select four or five short and interesting news stories on various topics. Cut off each story's headline and tape all the headlines to a separate sheet. Then photocopy the stories and the headline sheet; make one set for each group.
- Students form groups. Hand out one set of news stories and a headline sheet to each group. Tell students to take turns reading each story aloud; then they should try to match each story with its correct headline. Set a time limit of about ten minutes. Elicit groups' answers.
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News broadcasts
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 11, "Tell Me More."
Time: 15–20 minutes. This fun role-play activity reviews describing past events using various verb forms.
- Divide the class into groups. Tell each group to choose five or six recent events in the news (i.e., preferably different kinds of events like sports, politics, crime, world events, and human-interest stories). Tell students to briefly discuss these events.
- Explain that groups need to prepare a two-minute TV or radio news broadcast on the events they have chosen and discussed. Also, help them prepare the standard opening and closing remarks for a news program in English (e.g., "Good evening. This is the WELT News Hour reported by . . . and . . . . The top story tonight is . . . ." and ending with "That's all the news for tonight. Have a good evening, and we'll see you tomorrow at the same time."). Set a time limit of about ten minutes for planning the news broadcasts. Go around and give help as needed.
- Now groups take turns presenting their news broadcasts in front of the class. For any group doing a TV news program, tell them it is all right if they "read" the news as long as they use the "Look Up and Say" technique while looking at the "camera" (i.e., the class) as much as possible.
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Verb contest
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 12, "Reading: Strange but true."
Time: 15 minutes. This activity provides an opportunity for students to review the spelling of verb forms – here, the simple past and the past participle. This contest can easily be conducted with another focus (e.g., singular and plural nouns; comparative forms of adjectives).
Preparation: Make a list of verbs for the contest. Choose verbs from the current unit and from previous units, focusing on verbs that have irregular forms (see the appendix at the back of the Student's Book for a handy list of irregular verbs). You will need the same number of verbs for each group (e.g., 5 groups x 5 verbs = 25 verbs).
- Books closed. Divide the class into groups and assign them letters (Group A, Group B, etc.). Then choose a verb from your list and ask Group A how to say and spell the simple past and past participle. Give the group a few seconds to discuss how each verb is spelled. If both forms are correct, the group gets two points; if only one is correct, the group gets only one point and the next group gets a chance for a point. If both forms are incorrect, spell the words correctly for the class and go on to the next group and the next verb.
- Continue the contest until you have used all the verbs on your list and all the groups have had the same number of turns. The winner is the group with the most points.
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The best excuse
This activity is designed to be taught with Exercise 12, "Reading: Strange but true."
Time: 5–10 minutes. This activity practices the simple past and the past continuous.
- Ask students to imagine that they arrived late to class or for an important event. They have to make up a good excuse for being late. Encourage students to think of unusual or amusing excuses. For example:
I was driving along the highway when a plane made an emergency landing in front of me. It blocked traffic for over an hour, and that's why I'm late.
- After students work individually to make up their excuses, have volunteers give their excuses. Who had the most creative excuse?
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