Pass it on!

Objective & content

By the end, B1+ pupils can report what someone said with said, told and asked, changing the tenses and time words: "I'm moving to Spain next month." She said she was moving to Spain the next month. The bank is 15 projectable slides: a how-to slide, then 14 everyday scenes (a teacher, a mum at the door, a football coach, a doctor, a neighbour over the fence...), each with the speaker's exact words in a speech bubble and the phrases to report them.

Pedagogical guide

Use it as a five-minute warm-up on a structure pupils often know on paper but rarely use when they speak. The scenes are moments every teenager knows, and the words are short, so pupils can focus on the changes: am to was, will to would, have lost to had lost, next month to the next month, and orders that become told him to ... or told him not to .... Checking the changes together after each report keeps the focus on accuracy. The slides are interchangeable: two or three per lesson.

Suggested procedure

1. (1 min) Show the how-to slide and read the example together.
2. (2 min) Show one scene and read the words in the bubble. Pupils report them to a partner, starting with He said ... or She told ....
3. (2 min) Two pupils report to the class. Check the tense and time changes together, then show the next scene.

Adaptations

• [S] Write the first words of the report on the board (She said she ...), so pupils only change the verb.
• [A] Play a whisper chain down the row and compare the last report with the bubble, or pupils say something to a partner, who reports it to the class.

Materials & prerequisites

A projector or screen; the bank is a 16:9 PDF, one slide per page, with no printing needed. Assumes the past simple, the present perfect and will, so pupils can shift them back.