Social responsibility. Narrative tenses

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B. Quiz
The next activity is done in pairs to test your understanding of narrative tenses. You need at least two players.
Print one copy each of page two and three of the PDF template for this exercise.
These are card templates. Each card has one of the 16 sentences above, but the narrative tense is missing on the question side.
For example, 'While they... (play) football, it stopped raining and Sam was really happy he hadn't gone to the cinema.'
The missing narrative tense of the verb in this instance is 'were playing'.
Cut up the cards, but don’t cut along the dotted lines. These are fold lines to make the cards double-sided. I glue them together with card to make them more durable.
Take turns to draw a card and hold it, so that the answer side is facing you and the question side is facing the other player.
If the player is able to read the sentence with the correct form of the verb, they win the card and keep it to represent their score. If you make a mistake, the card goes to the bottom of the pile of cards.
Continue until you’ve used all of the cards. Whoever has the most cards wins.
C. Connect Three
This game is for two players. Use the same cards as before, and also print the game board on page five of the template.
Using the same cards as the quiz (pages two and three of the PDF template), take turns to draw a card. Only look at the question side.
Try to read the sentence aloud, including the correct form of the verb.
Check the other side of the card, which has the correct sentence. If you were correct, choose a square and mark it as yours (using a pencil or counter).
The first player to connect three squares in a line is the winner.
D. Narrative tense 'blockbusters'
This game is adapted from the UK television game show Blockbusters. It is played with two players: one player tries to connect four cards horizontally, and the other player vertically. This activity also uses the game board on page five.
Place all of the cards on the board in a random order, with the question side facing up.
Take it in turns to read a sentence aloud with the correct form of the verb.
Check the other side of the card. If you are correct, mark the square below as yours (using a pencil or counters) and remove the card from the board.
If you are wrong, put the card back.
The first player to connect along their axis wins. Connections can also be diagonal.
Making your own version
Now that you’ve practised narrative tenses, you should be ready to write your own story. You could use the blank template on page six of the PDF template to make your own version of the game cards.
You can prepare them in PowerPoint or just print the templates and write on them directly.
Game cards are reusable
The cards can be time-consuming to make initially, but once you have a set of cards, they can be adapted and reused with counters and pencils again and again. You could try making card sets with your students, which may be a more motivating reason for students to write a story, as it will be used by other students.
Form
Subject + past tense
He went to the station.
Subject + be (past) + verb -ing
He was going to the station.
Subject + had + past participle
He had gone to the station.
Subject + had + been + verb -ing
He had been going to the station.
What are narrative tenses?
Narrative tenses are used to talk about past events and to tell stories
Narrative tenses are four tenses that we often use for talking about past events.
The most common of these is the past simple.
The other three tenses, the past continuous, the past perfect simple and the past perfect continuous, can help us to say what we want more efficiently.
It is useful to look at these tenses together in the context of the function narrating - relating past events.
Narrative tenses in a written story
Narrative tenses are common in written stories, especially when they describe action
Bond opened the door very slowly, looked carefully around the room and walked in. The window was open and the curtains were blowing in the wind. Clearly someone had left in a hurry.

Past simple

opened, looked, walked, was
Past continuous
were blowing
Past perfect
had left
The first three verbs - opened, looked and walked - are a sequence: they are written in the order that the actions took place. We know this because they are in the past simple.
The past continuous verb, were blowing, shows an action in progress: the curtains started blowing before he walked into the room and continued to blow while he was there.
The last verb, had left, shows an action that happened before he walked in.
If we used the past simple for the last verb, the meaning would be different: