Use deductive activities to introduce the past time frame.

Examples:
First we will have the teacher model examples of sentences in the past tense.  For example, the teacher could say, "When I woke up this morning, I quickly ate breakfast, gathered my papers and drove to work. By the time I arrived at the office, I was exhausted because I had fought my way through traffic. Just as I was sitting down with a cup of tea, the phone rang. My daughter was calling to tell me I had forgotten to turn off the water faucet. The sink had overflowed and water was all over the floor. This day has not gone well for me." 

The teacher could then write the verbs on the board and have the students identify which tenses were used. Then she would elicit similar stories from the students and write their verbs on the board.  Then as a follow-up activity the students will create short written stories with verbs underlined and identified by each student. No grammar rules would be given yet -- students would try to imply usage from spoken language.  The students would then get together in groups of three to share their stories and ask for input on their identification of the verbs.  Finally, the students would hand in their stories to the teacher for her review and comments.

Explanation:
The teacher will briefly explain the various time frames based on pages 55-56 in Applied English Grammar and tell the students that they will be learning about the past tense in this section of the class.  For homework the teacher will ask the students to take note of how they say things in the past tense and also how they hear others express things in the past tense.  They should return to class the next day with ten examples.
 

Homework Review:
The teacher will start today’s class by collecting the homework from the previous class and asking students to volunteer any interesting observations that they may have made.  
 
 Explanation:
Then the teacher will explain the past tense in more detail and give out a handout describing in the simple past, past progressive, past perfect and present perfect tenses.  She will prepare this handout based on the materials contained on pages 57-58, 67, 71 and 75-76 in Applied English Grammar.  

Group Work:
After a brief overview of the various tenses, the teacher will break the students up into four groups.  She will assign each group one of the four forms of the past tense and ask them to prepare an in-class presentation that will explain their assigned form.  She will provide readable reference grammar’s for each group and encourage each group to provide examples that will explain their past tense form.

Review and Homework:
After each group presents their past tense form the teacher will make final comments and suggestions based on her interpretation of the students understanding of these principles.  She will then assign homework from Applied English Grammar on pages 81-82 exercises B. and C. 

Review:
The teacher will start this class of by reviewing the answers to the homework from the previous night.  The teacher will then ask for any questions that the students may have concerning the homework or the past time frame.  Then the teacher will begin a brief review of the simple past tense and the past progressive tense.  After ensuring that the class is grasping these concepts, the teacher will talk about irregular verbs in the past tense.  

Exercises:
1- To practice the irregular verbs in the past tense, the teacher will use the crossword puzzles on pp.60-62 in the following activity.  Students are placed in pairs, and each is given only half of the clues for the puzzle. They must communicate the clues (words) they have in turn to their partners using whatever means, except telling them, while the other partner tries to guess. So they can draw or act the word out. Of course, the students can be given the option of describing orally. 

2- As a follow-up, the teacher could put all or just the higher frequency verbs into a hat (maybe with a few others as well). The class is divided up into 2 teams. In turn, a person from each team is selected to "describe" as many verbs as they can to the members of their group in say, 2minutes. A running tally is kept until their are no more verbs. Winners get a prize.

3- Students are asked to choose their favorite/most useful/highest frequency 7 verbs from the list, rank them, give all 3 forms of the verb, and then add 3 more irregular verbs of their choice. 

4- Then students write a story in pairs.  The challenge is issued as "Who can include all 20 verbs coherently and logically into their story?" So they can kept a running tally of the ones they have used or not.  These in turn are read aloud in class.  There will surely be some good stuff in these and definitely some good laughs for all!

5- As a follow-up, teacher focuses on lexical expansion of some of the more important/higher frequency verbs.  The teacher then brainstorms with the students to help them identify helpful collocations of a verb, such as: to catch...a bus, plane, taxi, a nap, a fish, a movie, etc. Here, it is helpful for students to maintain lexical lists. It gives them more communicative power through pre-fabricated lexical chunks and bigger handles within the language. 

Homework:
For homework the students will be do an assignment that will reinforce what they learned in class.  This assignment will also prepare them for the next in-class activity, which will focus on using short biographical texts.  Since ESL/EFL students have their own historical figures from their own respective countries from all walks of life, each student will be asked to choose an important/prominent/interesting/controversial/popular/etc. figure from their country.  Ask them to write a short biographical sketch and to quickly research if necessary.  This sketch could include interesting facts, why this person is important to their country and why they have a personal interest in them.  After finishing their sketch, they will underline all of the simple past, past progressive and past irregular verb forms that are found in their sketch. (The students could also bring a picture of the person they did their sketch about to the next class)

Homework Review:
Students will exchange their texts with a partner.  Then they will read and provide 3 comments or questions about the others figure.  After the exchange, the teacher may selectively choose some of the students' figures and ask the students to briefly present their figure to the class.

Review:
The teacher will then briefly review the past perfect and the present perfect and answer any questions that the students may have about past tense verb forms.

Activity:
1- The teacher would then facilitate an in-class activity using the biographical sketches found in Applied English Grammar.  The teacher would find pictures of the people mentioned in the book: Astor, Bell, Carnegie, Columbus, Geronimo.  Then the teacher would group the students so that each group had one biographical sketch to work with.  After filling in the blanks as an info-gap activity, the teacher would have the students get up and read the bios, leaving out the person's name.  Then the other groups would have to guess which picture went with the description.

2- Then the teacher would move on to the texts on pages 84-5.  The teacher would divide the students up into pairs or small groups, and assign each a small text. Tell them to read their texts, develop 3 comprehension questions related to their text and 3 matching/multiple-choice vocabulary questions. After their finished, the questions are collected and mixed up and redistributed to different groups. Students are then told to first find out which text goes with their questions and second to then answer the questions they have been given.  These are then checked orally as a class for factual accuracy. 

3- Then students, in the same pairs or groups, are instructed to underline and classify the verb phrases in their texts, counting as well the # of irregular and complete verbs. The students are also instructed to indicate next to each past tense verb whether it is simple past, past progressive, past perfect or present perfect.  This is then checked as a class. 

4- The teacher then for purposes of clarification and focus, would then pull out sample sentences in the texts highlighting different past aspects on the board for display and meaning analysis. 

Homework:
The students are assigned to do the grammar assignment on the reading about Mount Rushmore on page 68 in Applied English Grammar.  In addition to being asked to underline the complete verb, the teacher will ask them to indicate whether the verb is in simple past, past progressive, past perfect or present perfect form.  The teacher would also inform the students that they are going to have a short oral and written test on the past time frame in the next class.

Language Lab:
The students are paired and work on activities to reinforce what the students have learned about the past time frame.  The students would rotate between these three activities: 
1- One station would have the materials for an information gap exercise (pictures and words).  This exercise would use the stories and pictures from the previous lesson the students would try and retell the biography.

2- Another station would have scrambled sentences.  With the charts on pages 73 and 74, one student would have the scrambled sentences and the other student could have the prompts (3 days ago, while, after, etc.)

3- The third station would be a location where the teacher could oversee a brief oral test.  The teacher would ask one student to ask the other student such as ‘what did you do last night?’  The teacher would listen to the two speak and evaluate them on their use of the past tense forms.

Test:
After rotating through each of these stations all of the students would all be given a short written quiz on the past time frame.