When did you last ...?

Procedure

• Write a When did you last ...? question on the board, for example:
  • When did you last go to a restaurant?
  • When did you last go the park?
  • When did you last go to the cinema?
  • When did you last go on holiday?
  • When did you last go shopping?
  • When did you last visit a relative?
• Draw a line all the way down the board to the right of this in which you can write vocabulary and phrases that students ask you for during the activity. 
• Throw the question open to the whole class and write up time phrases that students need in your vocabulary part of the board, e.g. last week, two weeks ago, in March, on my birthday, etc. 
• Ask students what other questions you could ask about this event. For example, for the restaurant they might say:
  • Which restaurant did you go to?
  • Who did you go with?
  • What did you eat?
  • Did you like it?
  • Did you have dessert?
  • What did you talk about?
• Build up a list of as many questions as you can on the board.
• Once you have a good number of questions on the board, group students into two or threes and ask them to ask and answer questions together. 
• Tell them they don't need to write anything as the aim of this activity is speaking practice. Monitor as the students speak but don't interrupt. 
• Focus on students' use of the past simple and make a note of any problems or mistakes. As students ask you for help with vocabulary and phrases write these up on the board in your vocabulary section.
• Bring students back together after about ten minutes and go through any difficulties that you picked up with the use and form of the past simple during monitoring.
• Move students round to form new pairs or groups of threes and give each group another When did you last …? question.
• Give students a time limit, say five or ten minutes, depending on how easily they can work with the target language, and ask them to write as many questions as they can think of for the situation they've been given. The teacher moves round the groups helping and correcting the questions. Make sure all students in the group write the questions as they will need them later.
• Change students into new groups and tell them to ask their questions and this time to write down the answers. Again you can monitor and write up the vocabulary that students need.
• At this stage students return to the group in which they wrote their questions and compare the answers they received. After a few minutes the teacher can go over any further past simple matters that came up during monitoring.

Extension

• Every student now has a set of answers to the questions they wrote before. They could use these to write a short text in the past simple either in class or at home.