Six Simple Past Activities for Upper Elementary Classrooms

The simple past sticks best when students use it to say something they care about, and these six activities do that with very little prep. Four come straight from the Observe and Transfer pages of a grammar unit, one is a verb sort, and one is a low-cost interview game that needs only paper.

Opening and sorting activities

1. Silent picture, two observations, one question

Show an illustration of a past event with the title covered. Students write two things they can actually see and one question they have. Only then do you reveal what the picture is about and ask them to describe the event in the past tense. The point is to keep observation apart from inference: "There is a dog" is an observation, "They were scared" is a guess that needs a reason.

The book Simple Past: Stories About Yesterday opens each of its five paths this way, so you can reuse the routine all week.

2. Ending sort with a twist

Write 12 regular verbs on index cards, including a few with spelling changes such as stop. Students sort the cards into "just add -ed" and "spelling changes", then write one sentence per pile. Ask them to test a borderline card with a partner and defend where it goes. This mirrors the regular verbs path, where stop becomes stopped, and it gives quick students a reason to argue.

3. Three-sentence went, saw, had stories

Give each pair three words: went, saw, had. Each student writes a three-sentence story using all three, then partners swap and underline every past form. Ask the reader to say which verb is irregular and how they know. Students often realize they can recognize irregular forms by sound long before they can spell them.

Question and story activities

4. Turn it into a question, then a negative

Write four affirmative sentences on the board. Students rewrite each as a question and as a negative using did and the base form of the verb. Include one deliberately wrong version, "Did you went?", and ask which word carries the past tense. Once students see that did already marks the tense, the error tends to fade.

5. Compare with the example

This is the transfer task. Give students a model such as "First we walked. Then we saw a dog. Finally we went home." Ask them to invent their own situation, draw or describe it, and explain what is similar and what is different. Listen for connecting words and for tense consistency. A student who writes "First we walked. Then we see a dog" has told you exactly what to teach tomorrow.

If you want extra short exercises to run alongside this, Grade 6 grammar practice pages work well as a follow-up for fast finishers.

6. The yesterday interview (no materials)

This one does not come from the unit. Students each get a half sheet of paper and write three questions beginning with "Did you". Examples: "Did you walk to school?" and "Did you eat breakfast?" They interview three classmates and tally yes and no answers. Then they write two sentences from the results: "Four people walked to school. Two people did not walk." It takes about 15 minutes and uses questions, negatives, and regular and irregular verbs at once.

Choosing and combining

Rotate the grouping as well as the activity. Silent picture talk works as a whole-class start, the sorts and story swaps work in pairs, and the interview game works best with students moving around the room. A change of grouping every ten minutes keeps a 35-minute lesson from feeling like one long worksheet.

For a single 35-minute lesson, pick one opening activity and one practice activity. Activities 1 and 5 pair well, because the picture gets students talking and the transfer task sends them off writing. Activities 2 to 4 fit as the middle block of a lesson on a specific topic.

• Whole class: activity 1
• Pairs: activities 2, 3, and 4
• Moving around the room: activity 6

Whatever you choose, keep a simple supports table ready: sentence starters such as "Yesterday I ...", word cards for the target verbs, and a shared description of the image for students who need one before they write.

The unit has five paths in total and a project at the end, where students explain one topic to a classmate with two examples. You can see the full set of pages here before deciding which activities to borrow.

If you teach several of the neighboring grammar topics in one term, the language bundle covers sentence types, simple past, pronouns, and German for school in one purchase.

Related reading from the Teacher Hub

• A Seven-Lesson Plan for Teaching the Simple Past in Grades 5-6
• How to Teach Subject and Object Pronouns in Grades 3–6
• How to Teach Days, Months and Dates to ESL Newcomers