Reported speech: You missed it!

Objective & content

Everything to teach reported speech, 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: Mia is ill and misses the class meeting about the school trip, so her friend Zara calls her and tells her what everyone said. Mr Evans said the trip was on 12 June, Tom said he would bring his football, and Lily said she couldn't come. Pupils meet the structure in the story before they meet the rule. The pack teaches reported statements with said (that) and told + a person (that), the verb one step back (is → was, are → were, like → liked, don't → didn't, will → would, can → could), the person changes (I → he / she, my → his / her, we → they), and the choice between said and told. By the end, pupils can pass on what other people said.

Pedagogical guide

The rule is given in Remember! boxes, not left to be deduced; the story and its pictures make the structure 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. The Gold task on page 3 asks pupils to write a message to a friend who missed a class meeting. The team game, "What did they say?", has drawings made for the pack: teams report what a hungry cat, a grandma on a skateboard or a talking parrot said, then choose between said and told. Every round opens with a worked example. The quiz gives a mark out of 20. The pack stays at B1+ level: reported statements only; reported questions (She asked where I lived), reported orders (He told me to ...) and changes from the past simple to the past perfect are left for B2, so no direct sentence in the pack is in the past. The key page of the practice sheet holds the answers, teacher notes and seven common mistakes (for example "She said me she was tired", "He told that he was hungry" and "Tom said he will bring his football"). 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 "Why is Mia in bed? What did Tom say?", then read the story together. Read the Remember! boxes aloud; pupils find every said, told and the verb after it in the story. Say a sentence about yourself ("I'm tired."); pupils report it ("You said you were tired."). Say a sentence with a gap; pupils say said or told. 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, 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 changes (is → was, will → would, can → could, I → he / she, my → his / her), and do the quiz in two halves.

[A] Send fast pupils straight to Gold and then to the Gold writing task on page 3, where they write a message about a class meeting; a partner reports one sentence to the class (Sam said ...). In round 1 of the game, ask them to add a second sentence (... and it wanted some fish).

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 the past simple of be, can and regular verbs, and would.