I love the Story telling game to revise past tense with my little kids. It’s also a great way to practice speaking.
FOR KIDS: Divide your class into small groups of 3-4. The smaller the group, the more speaking practice the kids get. Have the kids sit in a circle. Give each group a line to start with. For e.g. – There was a little boy/chicken/monkey. The first person in the group must come up with a sentence in the past tense to continue the story. And so on..
Monitor all the groups to make sure all the kids are using the past tense form of the verbs. I’ve used this with my pre-intermediate 8-10 year olds who are in the process of learning past tense.
To give them a little impetus, you can do a board race with past tense verbs on the board so students don’t run out of verbs to use.
FOR TEENS AND OLDER: In my experience, older intermediate and advanced ESL students tend to get somewhat bored with the somewhat slow pace of story telling. Make this a fun writing exercise for them. Give each student an A4 sheet with the first line of the story printed on top. For e.g. – There was a crazy boy with five feet. Each student writes the next line of the story on their papers and then passes it on to the person on their right. The person on the right must now write the next sentence in the story, also using past tense, or more complex verb forms. Pass it on again. And so on..
In the case of older students too, small groups works best so everyone gets a chance to contribute to familiar stories. Anything larger than 5 people in a group has never been quite as successful in my classes.
**Remember to reward the best story for added motivation!
