Activity

My Strange Vacation

A fun interview activity to practice past simple questions.

I hope this explanation is clear! If anyone needs any clarification please leave a comment!

This activity was made to specifically practice open-ended past tense questions (Question word + did …?)

Specifically:
Where did you go?
How did you go there?
Who did you see/meet?
What did you eat?
What did you do?

Each student needs: A worksheet and an information card.

To set up, I tell the students that everyone went on a very strange and weird trip recently! And we are going to talk about our weird holidays.

I usually give out the worksheet first and drill the questions to practice pronunciation and meaning. Once the students are okay, give out the cards and tell the students to keep their information a secret. I give them a minute or so to read the cards and ask the meaning of any vocab they aren't sure of.

Once everyone is ready, have the students fill in the box at the bottom of the worksheet with their answers. It's important to stress here that they only write the vocab and not full sentences.

After that, I give them 2-3 minutes to write full sentences on the first half of the worksheet, and they spend some time quietly practicing the questions and answers (This usually helps some of the students who have trouble with writing catch up to the quicker ones)

When everyone is finished writing, demonstrate with the JTE. (Feel free to do this however you like, but this is my usual set-up.)

  1. Find a partner 2.Play janken
  2. Winner can ask 1 QUESTION ONLY from the worksheet
  3. Partner must answer in a full sentence
  4. If the answers match, then both partners can write each other's name down next to that question in the "Your match" box. If not, then too bad.
  5. Loser can ask 1 QUESTION ONLY from the sheet. Same rules apply.
  6. Find a new partner and repeat.

I usually make it a race to see who can find 5 matches the fastest, and they get bonus points if they have a different person for each one.

My students are very easily amused, so even the thought of eating fish and chips in Tokyo or seeing Doraemon in Italy was hilarious, but feel free to change things to make it even more wacky~!

13
Submitted by GaeilgeAmee February 10, 2023 Estimated time: 20mins
  1. AsakawaSune February 10, 2023

    This looks fun!

  2. GaeilgeAmee February 10, 2023

    @AsakawaSune Thanks! My students really had a lot of fun with it and had some giggles, so I hope some other classes get some fun out of it.

  3. EvOConnor February 14, 2023

    Thanks for the activity, it worked really well and my class enjoyed it!

  4. GaeilgeAmee February 15, 2023

    @EvOConnor I'm glad to hear it!

  5. TheBlueStuff February 20, 2023

    Great game, thanks for sharing! The table at the bottom of the worksheet is the first (question, answer and match). So it should be at the top of page ideally, not the bottom.

    If you do that, you can have students interview eachother and give one word answers to speed up the time. then they can write full sentances at the end of class (if there is time)...or for homework

  6. GaeilgeAmee February 22, 2023

    @TheBlueStuff Thanks for the feedback! I see what you mean about the formatting of the worksheet, I'll probably out the table at the top, personally I had them write the full sentences before doing the interview because it's a rather low level class and they would have had trouble forming the sentences without having practiced them first/having the written one to fall back on, but of course feel free to change things as best suits the needs of you and your class

Sign in or create an account to leave a comment.