Fun Activities to Review Past Simple

Reviewing and recalling certain topic, for my students of secondary school, are the important ones. They are often being forgetful if we do not repeat and review the previous topics. One of the examples is reviewing the past verbs to tell about their past experiences. Many activities have been done by them, such as card game, bingo game, guessing game, and so forth. Last meeting, we had some interesting and fun activities to review the use of past verbs to study recount text. 

I prepared a simple lesson plan for my students and some materials/worksheets/medias to review past verbs of recount text. First, my students had exercises about regular and irregular past verbs, the pronunciation, and the rules of -ed/-d suffixes. After that, they were asked to make simple sentences using the past verbs given on a piece of paper based on the pattern they have learnt before. The most right answer got a score. 

The next activity was pair work card game. The students sat face to face and they had a set of questions cards. They played in turn taking the card out from the box and called out the question. His/her opponent partner must give an answer. If he/she gave the right answer, the card would be hers/his. Students with the most cards got a score. 

The last reviewing activity was listening to songs. I searched suitable songs for the topic on google, and I found two songs, they are 'because you loved me by Celine Dion' and 'Yesterday by The Beatles'. Then, I prepared the activities using these songs. First, I gave the students a song worksheet of 'because you loved me' lyric. In each verse, there were two choices of past verbs, and students had to choose the best answer of the verbs by listening to the song. 

Still using the same song, the students were given the second worksheet. In this activity, they had to get rid of the extra words written on the song lyrics. So, I gave extra words on each sentence of the lyrics, and the students circled the unnecessary words/phrases on the lyrics of the song. At last, the students had the third worksheet of the second song, entitled 'Yesterday by The Beatles'. The students filled the blanks lyrics of the song by listening to the song played twice. Students with the most right answer of these three activities would get a score. 

'My Delicious Sandwich'

 

The children around my house, in Trenggalek, East Java, Indonesia, are not familiar with sandwich, which is known as a western food. Last week, we learnt about food and drink. I showed to them some picture flashcards of food and drink and one of them was 'sandwich'. They asked me what kind of sandwich is and I told them that it is like a hamburger but having different bread. Because my students have not known yet such kind of food, yesterday we made our own simple sandwich. In this activity, they not only know what sandwich looks like, but they learn about the vocabularies related to sandwich also. 

I prepared some materials related to the topic of sandwich. I made some pictures flashcards about the ingredients of making sandwich, such as bread, sausage, chicken nugget, tomato, lettuce, cheese, and sauce. Then, I also prepared a worksheet for them. First, the students (around 7-8 years old) practiced the pronunciation and spelling words using flash cards. They repeated and spelled the ingredients of making sandwich. After that, I showed the real objects of the ingredients put on small plates/saucers and labeled the names of them using colorful sticky notes. Next, the students did exercises on their worksheet about making sandwich. 

The focus of the activity was to practice vocabulary related to sandwich, so we did not talk about the procedures of making sandwich. After having exercises, it was the time to make yummy sandwich. While arranging the ingredients, I asked the students again what the names of them one by one by asking the question 'what is it?' and pointing the real objects. When the sandwiches were done, we put them on a large flat plate. The children labeled their sandwich by writing their name on a sticky note and was embedded  by using tooth-pick. They were really excited having their own delicious sandwich and it was ready to be tasted. They said, 'Hmmmmm...so yummy!' 

Comparison Board Game

Board Game

My students are frequently being forgetful when they have to review about comparison material. They are often making mistakes all the times to differentiate among the three types of comparison, they are positive degree, comparative degree, and superlative degree. They usually put the wrong prefixes and suffixes of comparison words, for example; the word 'high' will be 'more higher' or 'highest' to form comparative sentences. Teacher has drilled them in each meeting or given them an easy and eye catching note about comparison, but it does not work optimally. 

The students play the board game

Having the experiences above, teacher has designed a board game to review the use of comparison sentences. Through this fun activity, teacher expects that the students can memorize the pattern of comparison sentences in an interesting way. Even though, this game is quite common, but my students enjoy to play this game with their friends, and they feel excited to finish the game firstly than others. The preparation for teacher is quite easy. I made some nice and colorful shapes using Ms. Words and arranged them into downward spiral or like 'snake and ladder', then I put some clues to form comparison sentences. The clues are designed to be authentic ones, so the students are familiar with the words or situation, such as Trenggalek & Surabaya; Blackberry & Android; You & Your sister/brother, and so forth. Each player rolls the dice and she/he has to form and call out a sentence of comparison using the clue given. The player, who land his/her counter on "finish", will be the winner of this game.