Introduction:
This is a speaking activity which allows students to describe the most important things that happened to them in 2016, over the holidays, the last school year etc.
Objectives:
- To describe past events using past tenses or recent events using present perfect tenses.
- To practise asking wh-questions in authentic communication.
Procedure:
- Ask students to write down ten important or memorable things that happened to them in the chosen time period. Make sure they know the events will be discussed in class and are not too personal. You can decrease or increase that number depending on how talkative your class is (I found teenagers usually struggle with ten).
- Put students in pairs (student A and student B) or groups of three.
- Student A briefly describes the first event on the list. Once student A has finished student B asks additional questions starting with who, whose, what, when, where, why, which, how, how long and how many.
- Encourage students to show pictures of the events, if they have any on their phones, to make the activity more relevant.
- Students continue until they have each described all the events from their lists.
Alternative ideas:
- You could also ask students to come up with a recent summary of events in politics, art, science, etc.
- You could use it as a getting- to- know- you activity with students writing a list of “Ten things to know about me “.
Related posts:
Time to keep up with the times
Karola' s English Blog 