Communicative games to pracise the simple past

 1. Murder Mystery / The Alibi Game

This is a classic teen favorite because it lets students act and interrogate each other.

• Setup. Tell the class a minor "crime" happened at school yesterday afternoon (e.g., someone ate the principal's cake). Pick two volunteers to be the suspects and send them into the hallway for three minutes to invent a matching cover story about where they were and what they did.
• Gameplay. Bring one suspect back in at a time. The rest of the class acts as detectives and asks detailed past-tense questions ("What did you wear?", "What time did you arrive?", "What did you eat?").
• Winning. After questioning both suspects separately, the class votes on whether they are guilty based on any contradictions in their stories.

2. Find Someone Who... (Weekend Edition)

This mingling game gets the entire class out of their seats and talking to multiple partners.

• Setup. Give each student a grid with 8 to 10 prompts tailored to teens (e.g., ...watched a horror movie last weekend, ...ate pizza yesterday, ...forgot their homework last week, ...went to the beach last summer).
• Gameplay. Students walk around the room turning the prompts into Did you...? questions. When a classmate answers "Yes, I did," the student writes down their name and must ask one follow-up Wh- question ("What movie did you watch?").
• Winning. The first student to fill their grid with different names and details wins.

3. The "Worst Vacation Ever" Story Chain

Teens enjoy exaggerating, making this group storytelling game naturally engaging.

• Setup. Put students into small groups of four or five and give each group a stack of verb cards (mixing regular and irregular verbs like lose, miss, rain, break, eat, get lost).
• Gameplay. The first student starts a story with "Last summer, I went on the worst vacation ever." Each student takes turns drawing a card and adding one sentence to the disaster using that verb in the past simple.
• Winning. Groups vote on the funniest or most dramatic story and share a quick summary with the class.

4. Celebrity Time-Travel Interviews

Roleplay reduces self-consciousness because students speak from behind a character.

• Setup. Pair students up. Student A secretly chooses a famous historical figure, fictional character, or celebrity (e.g., Cleopatra, Albert Einstein, or a famous footballer), while Student B acts as a journalist.
• Gameplay. Student B has two minutes to ask up to 10 past-tense questions about the character's life and achievements ("Where did you live?", "Did you win any awards?", "What did you invent?").
• Winning. Student B tries to guess the secret identity before time runs out, then they switch roles.

5. Lies, Lies, Lies! (Bluffing Game)

This works well in small groups and requires zero preparation.

• Setup. Give each student three small slips of paper. On two slips, they write TRUE, and on one slip, they write LIE.
• Gameplay. In groups of four, one student tells a short story about something that happened to them in the past (a childhood memory, a weird injury, or a recent weekend event) based on the slip they secretly picked. The group has two minutes to grill the speaker with past-tense questions to test if the story holds up.
• Winning. Everyone guesses whether the story was true or a lie, and the speaker reveals their slip.

6. Desert Island Survival (Past-Tense Debrief)

This combines creative problem-solving with past-tense reporting.

• Setup. Put students in teams of three and give them a list of 10 random objects (e.g., a mirror, a shoelace, a frying pan, a box of matches). Tell them they were stranded on a desert island for three days and just got rescued.
• Gameplay. Teams spend five minutes deciding how they survived using only three of the items. Afterward, each team presents their survival report to the class in the past simple ("First, we built a shelter. Then, we used the mirror to start a fire...").
• Winning. The class votes on which team had the smartest survival strategy.

If you'd like ready-to-use materials for your 2º ESO class, I can generate:

• A printable "Find Someone Who..." worksheet tailored to Spanish teens
• A list of 40 irregular verb prompts for the story chain game
• A step-by-step lesson plan with timing for a 50-minute class

Let me know which one would save you the most prep time!

Reference words

 

EXPLANATION AND EXAMPLES

EXPLANATION 2

LIVEWORKSHEET EXERCISES

EXERCISE

Communicative activities for jobs vocabulary

1. Job Speed Dating 👩‍⚕️👨‍🍳
   Each student secretly chooses a job. They pair up and have one minute to interview each other, but they cannot say the job.

   • Where do you work?
   • What do you wear?
   • Do you work with people?
   • Do you use a computer?
   • Do you work at night?
     At the end: “I think you’re a nurse.” Then change partners.

2. Job Charades + Questions 🎭
   One student acts out a job. The class cannot guess immediately: they must first ask at least three questions:

   • Do you work indoors?
   • Do you wear a uniform?
   • Do you work with children?
     Then they can guess. This makes ordinary charades much more communicative.

3. The Worst Person for the Job 😂
   Give them a job orally: teacher, police officer, waiter, doctor, pilot… Students invent the worst possible candidate:

   “Tom wants to be a waiter, but he hates people, he always drops things and he never remembers anything.”

   Groups compete to create the funniest candidate.

4. Guess My Job – Yes/No Challenge
   A student chooses a job. The others have 20 questions maximum:

   • Do you work outside?
   • Do you help people?
   • Do you need special clothes?
   • Do you work with animals?
     Only yes/no questions are allowed.

5. Job Interview Role-play 💼
   One student is the interviewer and another wants the job. Make the jobs entertaining: zookeeper, video-game tester, football coach, singer, influencer, astronaut, theme-park worker.
   Questions can include:

   • Why do you want this job?
   • What are you good at?
   • What experience do you have?
   • Why should we choose you?

6. Who Should We Hire?
   Three students volunteer. You announce: “We need a new chef.” Each candidate has 30 seconds to convince the class:

   “You should hire me because I love cooking. I’m creative and I work well under pressure.”

   The class votes and must explain: “I’d hire Marta because…”

7. Jobs Taboo
   A student describes a job without saying some obvious words. For example:

   DOCTOR — can't say hospital, sick, medicine
   TEACHER — can't say school, students, class
   CHEF — can't say food, cook, restaurant

   This is excellent because it forces them to paraphrase.

8. A Terrible Day at Work 🎬
   Pairs choose a job and improvise a disastrous day:

   “I’m a waiter. Yesterday I dropped a pizza on a customer.”
   “What did you do?”
   “I apologised, but then I dropped his drink too.”

   This would be especially useful if you're combining jobs with the past simple.

9. Job Line-Up
   Say two extremes and students physically position themselves along an imaginary line:
   easy job ←→ difficult job
   boring ←→ exciting
   badly paid ←→ well paid
   safe ←→ dangerous

   Once positioned, ask students to justify their choice: “I think being a firefighter is very difficult because…” They can challenge each other.

10. Mystery Worker 🕵️
    One student comes to the front and says three clues:

“I work indoors.”
“I talk to many people.”
“People come to me when they have a problem.”

Teams can ask one additional question each before guessing.

11. Job Swap
    Give them a strange combination:

A teacher becomes a police officer.
A chef becomes a pilot.
A footballer becomes a doctor.

In pairs they discuss: What would happen on their first day?
“The chef would probably try to cook something in the cockpit!”

12. Jobs Hot Seat 🔥
    One student sits facing away from the board. Write a job behind them. The class gives clues:

“You work outside.”
“You work with plants.”
“You sometimes use a tractor.”

The student asks questions and guesses: “Am I a farmer?”

VOCABULARY: PLACES IN A SCHOOL

 

ART ROOM

CAFETERIA

CLASSROOM

SCHOOL GYM

ICT ROOM

LIBRARY

MUSIC ROOM

PLAYGROUND

RECEPTION

SCHOOL HALL

SCIENCE LAB

SPORTS FIELD

STAFF ROOM

HOW TO WRITE A DRAFT

 Why plan your writing? How to plan and draft your writing   Read this (from the BBC)

    There's a video explanation as well.

Writing a First Draft

A first draft is a preliminary attempt to get ideas down on paper. It’s okay if your ideas aren’t completely formed yet. Writing can shape your thoughts and guide you to your conclusion.

Strategies For Writing a First Draft

Try these tips for writing a first draft. They will help you stay focused on your topic and provide a rough sketch of what your paper will look like.

1. Write your research question or thesis and post it above your work space so you can see it.
2. Print out your outline and refer to it as you write.
3. Start wherever you want. Write the part that comes most easily. Many people recommend leaving the introduction until the end.
4. Some people recommend writing as much as you can in one sitting. In the time you’ve given yourself to write, you should be producing sentences and paragraphs, even bad ones.
5. Get your main points down, but leave out quotations and specific evidence if you don’t have them yet.
6. Leave gaps in the writing where you know you want to add more, and write yourself a quick note about what you should eventually include there.
7. Let go of perfection! Try to write complete sentences but don’t worry too much about grammar, word choice, or punctuation. These elements can be fine-tuned in revision.

SOURCE: https://uwaterloo.ca/writing-and-communication-centre/writing-first-draft

VOCABULARY: THE SENSES

 

SOFT, FLUFFY SOCKS

SCRATCHY LABELS

LUMPY FOOD

BITTER CHOCOLATE

SALTED CARAMEL

A STUNNING VIEW

MOUTH-WATERING FOOD

SWEET AND SOUR SAUCE

Example: I caught a short glimpse of the sea through the window.

Glimpse suggests seeing something very briefly, often only partially.

SCENTED CANDLES

I SNIFF A PERFUME AND REMEMBER GRANDMA'S HOUSE

DISGUSTING SMELL

MEMORIES CONJURE UP VIVID MEMORIES IN MY MIND'S EYE

YOUTUBE PLAYLIST FO SONGS WITH CATCHY RHYTHMS THAT GET STUCK IN YOUR BRAIN FOR HOURS:

CLICK HERE

SOME OPINION-ESSAY STATEMENTS

 

Relationships, dating and social media

1. Checking your partner's phone is acceptable if you suspect they are cheating.

2. Watching pornography has a negative influence on young people's relationships.

3. Dating apps have made it harder to find genuine love.

4. Posting provocative pictures on social media is a form of empowerment.

5. AI girlfriends and boyfriends could replace real relationships in the future.

Money, work and independence

6. Young people in Spain are better off emigrating than trying to build a future here.

7. It is more important to earn a high salary than to enjoy your job.

8. Adult children who live with their parents should pay rent, even if they are studying.

9. People who inherit several properties should pay much higher taxes.

10. University degrees are becoming less valuable than practical skills.

Gender, identity and equality

11. Traditional gender roles are making a comeback among young people.

12. Beauty standards promoted on social media are more harmful to boys than to girls.

13. Positive discrimination is necessary to achieve real equality.

14. Men and women face equally strong social pressures, but in different ways.

15. Parents should be allowed to monitor their teenage children's private messages.

Politics, society and controversial issues in Spain

16. Squatting in empty properties can be justified when people cannot afford housing.

17. The Spanish government should spend less money on pensions and more on young people.

18. Bullfighting should be completely banned in Spain.

19. Freedom of speech should include the right to express offensive opinions.

20. Spain should introduce compulsory military or community service for 18-year-olds.

School, freedom and teenage life

21. Students should be allowed to evaluate their teachers publicly.

22. Parents should stop financially supporting their children once they turn 18.

23. Cancel culture does more harm than good.

24. People should be allowed to change their physical appearance using cosmetic surgery from the age of 16.

25. Schools should stop teaching subjects that students will never use in real life.

ALSO:

University education should be free.

Friendship is about quality, not quantity.

Teenagers spend too much time online.

Exams are the best way to assess students.

Money can buy happiness.

Living in a big city is better than living in the countryside.

AI will improve education.

Students should have less homework.