Tell the story

Objective & content

By the end, B1- pupils can tell a short story in the past from four pictures, linking the events with first, then, while, suddenly and in the end. The bank is 9 projectable slides: a how-to slide, then 8 four-picture stories (a dog steals a picnic, a girl falls asleep on the wrong bus, a cat goes missing), each with a row of linkers.

Pedagogical guide

Use it as a five-minute warm-up for speaking in the past. The four numbered pictures give the order, so pupils can put their effort into the verbs and the linkers; while invites the past continuous (While they were playing frisbee, a dog ...). Each story has a small twist in the last picture, which gives pupils something to tell. The slides are interchangeable: one story per lesson.

Suggested procedure

1. (1 min) Show the how-to slide and read the example together.
2. (2 min) Show one story. In pairs, pupils tell it, one picture each in turn.
3. (2 min) One pair tells the whole story to the class.

Adaptations

• [S] Pupils tell one picture each, with one linker each.
• [A] Change the ending (What happened next?) or tell the story as the dog, the cat or the hedgehog.

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 of common verbs.