Ben’s Diary

Level: A2 (adaptable for lower and higher levels)

Aim: to practice Past, Present and Future (Past Simple, Present Simple and Present Continuous and Future Simple)

Materials: a drawing of a monster, whiteboard markers, clue cards (white construction paper or power point cards)

A drawing of a cute monster is put up/projected on the whiteboard.

3 big thinking balloons are drawn around the monster and last, current and next year are written at the top of each balloon respectively (e.g. 2017, 2018 and 2019).

Clue cards are ready to be given to students. The cards show dates (or only month/year) written at the top and various verb-noun collocations (e.g. June 2017 – play football, May 2017 -go to school and get an A in English, 2019- visit London, etc.).

SS are told the story about Ben:

„This is Ben and he is a clever boy. He likes to write and he keeps a diary. He writes his diary almost every day. He writes about what happened to him, what is happening to him, what happens to him and what he hopes will happen to him. One day he was coming downstairs from his room, he slipped and fell down and all the pages from his diary fell out.“

At this point the teacher spreads out the cards – face down – on the desk in front of the ss.

„We need to help Ben put the pages of his diary back in place.“

At this point ss are instructed to take 3 cards each. Ss (one by one) use the clues on the cards to make sentences and then write them (using past simple, present simple/continuous and future simple tenses) in the thinking balloons on the board.