Activity Focus:
Fluency (freer)
Activity Type:
Gallery walk
Materials:
Five or six pictures to post around the room- you can use these five if you’d like:
(*all pictures are free stock images from Pexels.com)
Preparation:
Before class, print the pictures out and put them up on the wall so that they are spread out around the room.
Activity Procedure:
Put the students in pairs (or groups of 3 or 4, depending on how many students you have). Tell students they’ll have a couple minutes to look at each picture and say what happened using first the past simple (to describe the picture) and then the reason (in the past perfect simple of continuous). Do a demo by showing students one of the pictures and eliciting possible responses. For example, for Picture 1 (of the car wreck), students could say things like:
He crashed his car because he had been speeding.
He got into an accident because he had never passed his driving test.
The accident happened because the driver hadn’t slept the night before and was exhausted.
There are many possibilities! The main thing to make sure students know is that they should say what happened in the picture in the simple past (He crashed his car/ Someone broke into their house/ The couple broke up/ He lost his job/ She slept on the couch/ etc.) and then give a reason for this by saying what had happened (or had been happening) before that, using the past perfect simple or continuous. (…because he had been drinking/…because they’d left the door unlocked/ …because they had fallen out of love/ …because he hadn’t been doing his work/ …because she had lost her keys and had to stay with her friend/ etc.) Again- there is no one answer- encourage students to be creative!
Have the students (in their pairs or groups) spend a couple minutes at each picture, trying to come up with the best explanation for what happened, and then rotate to the next picture when you give a pre-determined signal, like tapping on the board.
Activity Feedback:
When the students have been to each picture, ask them to return to their seats. Follow up by asking who had an interesting explanation for each picture and getting some responses.