Classroom activities

Are you looking for new grammar games for the classroom? Multiple winner of the TeachingEnglish blog award Mike Astbury shares some resources to download, print, and use in your class.

What are narrative tenses?

Narrative tenses are verb tenses that are used to talk about the past. You can often find them in stories, textbooks, spoken accounts and in descriptions of past events.

The following are examples of narrative tenses:

Past simple: 'We left for the airport on an exceptionally sunny day.'

Past continuous: 'The sun was shining and it was really hot by midday.'

Past perfect: 'It had been sunny on and off for the previous fortnight.'

Past perfect continuous: 'We had been waiting at the airport for what seemed like an eternity.'

Activities to practise narrative tenses 

The following games are designed to help students practise narrative tenses and don’t require teacher supervision. They need at least two players.

The games use 16 cards, which tell a short story when combined together. Each card has an example of a sentence using narrative tenses. Each sentence tells part of the story.

You can download a PDF template of all the cards, game boards and blank templates needed for all the games, and print them. Or, if you would prefer to make your own, write the following 16 sentences on 16 separate cards (one card per sentence).

1. It was raining outside when Sam got out of bed and looked out of the window.
2. He picked up his phone and sent a text to his friend James: 'No football today. How about going to the cinema?'
3. https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/classroom-activities-teach-narrative-tenses?utm_source=BC_TE_Facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=voices