Page 8 - 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

8 What Were You Doing?

This activity encourages students to use the word ‘‘while’’ and the past continuous to make sentences about what they
and their classmates were doing at certain times in the past.

Materials and Preparation

Explain the rules of the game.

Procedure

1 The students sit in a circle.
2 Pick a time in the past and tell the students to think about what they were doing at that time, e.g., at 7 o’clock last
night.
3 One student begins by telling the classmates what s/he was doing at that time, e.g., “I was having dinner at 7 o’clock
last night.”
4 The following student then repeats the previous student’s sentence using ‘while’ and adds what he or she was doing,
e.g., ‘‘While Alice was having dinner, I was playing a game on my PC.”
5 Each student, in turn, repeats the former students’ sentences with ‘while’ and adds their own sentence, e.g., ‘‘While
Alice was having dinner and Jane was playing a game on her PC, I was waiting for a taxi.’’
6 If a student cannot remember the previous student’s sentence, they are out of the round.
7 The round finishes when the turn circles back to the first student.
8 Students win 1 point if they can stay in the game.
9 Play several rounds by using different hours in the past. The student with the highest point at the end of the game
wins.

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