Reported questions and orders: The driving lesson

Objective & content

Everything to teach reported questions and orders, in one pack of four parts: slides to project, a three-level practice sheet, a team game and a 10-minute quiz with answers. The pack starts from a short story: Amira has her first driving lesson, and her little brother Zak wants to know how it went. Her instructor, Mrs Hill, asked her if she had ever driven before, told her to put on her seatbelt and asked her to drive slowly. At the petrol station, she told her to turn left, so Amira turned left, straight into the car wash. Pupils meet the structures in the story before they meet the rule. The pack teaches reported yes / no questions (She asked me if I had ever driven), reported wh- questions with statement word order (He asked how it had gone), orders and requests with told / asked someone (not) to, and the tenses and time words that go back when we report later (had done, could, would, the next day, the day before). By the end, pupils can report what someone asked them or told them to do without question order and without do or did.

Pedagogical guide

The rule is given in Remember! boxes, not left to be deduced; the story and its pictures make the structures easy to notice first. The practice sheet is one A4 sheet at three levels: every page has a Bronze, a Silver and a Gold task, so the whole class works on the same page and each pupil moves up when they finish. Page 1 is about questions, page 2 about orders and requests, and page 3 imagines that a week has passed, so the time words must change too. The team game is written for teenagers, with funny drawings: a girl who has dyed her hair green, a boy with his head stuck in the park railings, a goat eating a school tie, a gran holding her phone the wrong way round. In the first round, every question says how to build the answer (asked if + subject + verb); in the third round, teams report orders (the lifeguard told him not to jump in). Every round opens with a worked example. The quiz gives a mark out of 20. The pack stays at early B2 level: no reporting verbs with other patterns (suggest, admit, deny) and no reported must, should or might. The key page of the practice sheet holds the answers, teacher notes and seven common mistakes (for example "She asked me where was the garage", "She told me don't touch the radio" and "She said me to turn left"). Spelling is British English.

Suggested procedure

The pack fits two lessons of about 45 minutes. Lesson 1 is Teach it and Practise it; lesson 2 is Play it and Check it. The four parts can also be used alone.

1. (25 min) Teach it (lesson.pdf, lesson 1): show the four pictures and ask "Where did Amira turn left? Why?", then read the story together. Read the Remember! boxes aloud; pupils find the reported questions in the story and say the real question, then one pupil gives an order and the class reports it (He told us to stand up). Then do the six-question quick check with the class. The last slide is for the teacher and is not projected.
2. (20 min) Practise it (practice.pdf, lesson 1): give each pupil the three pages and a start (Bronze, Silver or Gold); correct page by page, with one pupil from each medal reading an answer.
3. (25 min) Play it (game.pdf, lesson 2): make teams and read each round's example together. Show each question, give 20 seconds to write the answer (40 seconds in round 3), then show the answer slide and keep the score. Round 4 is worth double points.
4. (10 min) Check it (quiz.pdf, lesson 2): pupils work alone on page 1; mark out of 20 with page 2.

Adaptations

[S] Start every pupil at Bronze and keep the Remember! slides on screen during the practice and the game. Give them a card with the three patterns (asked if + subject + verb, asked where + subject + verb, told someone (not) to + verb) and the list of time words that change, and do the quiz in two halves.

[A] Send fast pupils straight to Gold and then to page 3, where they write five questions a parent asked them last week and report them today. In round 1 of the game, ask them to give the real question back from the reported one.

Materials & prerequisites

A projector or screen for lesson.pdf and game.pdf (one PDF page per slide, turned with the arrow keys), and paper for the teams' answers. Print practice.pdf (3 pages for pupils; the key page is for the teacher) and quiz.pdf (page 1 for pupils, page 2 is the key), one copy per pupil. Pupils should already know reported statements with said and told (She said she was tired), the past perfect, and how to make direct questions and orders.