Page 7 - English 11 | Games and Activities-3

THEME 3 HARD TIMES

FUNCTIONS
F1 Describing events happening at the same time in the past
th
11 GRADE F2 Explaining people’s habits in the past

6 Back to Childhood…

This activity encourages students to practice the grammar structure used to/didn’t use to through especially speaking and
writing. With the help of this activity, students go back to their childhood and feel eager to talk about it.

Materials and Preparation

Copy and cut out the worksheet on page 62 for each group of students.
Procedure

1 Divide the students into two groups as A and B and give each student a corresponding worksheet.
2 Tell them they are going to play an entertaining true or false guessing game about their childhood.
3 The students’ task is to answer each prompt on their worksheet with true or false information as indicated.
4 Tell your students to work alone and write their answers in a sentence form using used to.
5 When the students have finished writing, they pair up with someone from the other group.
6 Student A goes first and tells Student B their first answer, e.g., ‘‘I used to love playing scrabble when I was 10.’’
Student B then asks some follow-up questions to find out if the answer is real or fabricated.
7 Student B then guesses if Student A is telling the truth or not and the correct answer is revealed.
8 If Student B guesses correctly, s/he wins a point. The students then swap roles. This continues back and forth until
all the answers have been revealed. The student with the most points at the end of the game wins.

7 Ten-Year Challenge

This activity enables students to compare their present selves to their past selves and express the differences between
their past and present habits by looking at each other’s old photos. It also encourages students to improve their listening
and speaking skills.

Materials and Preparation

Have students bring five old photos of them to take up the ten-year challenge.

Procedure

1 Ask students to work in pairs.
2 Have them exchange the photos and look at them carefully.
3 Encourage them to talk about the photos in detail and tell about their old times to their partners.
4 Make sure they avoid negative judgments.
E.g.
Jake: Hey! You used to have short hairlice: Oh, yes and what is more, I used to hate getting my hair cut. My mom
used to do it at home.
Sue: Look! There used to be a huge tree next to the clock tower in the city center.
Tom: Really? I used to live in the country. I don’t know what the city looked like ten years ago.

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