Past Simple Passive ESL Activities, Worksheets & Games

ESL Past Simple Passive Activity - Grammar and Speaking: Information Gap, Asking and Answering Questions from Prompts - Pair Work In this free past simple passive activity, students ask and answer Wh questions in the past simple passive about famous inventions and discoveries. In pairs, students take turns asking and answering past simple passive questions in order to complete missing information in a table on their worksheet, e.g. 'What was discovered by Alexander Fleming?' When the students have finished, they check their answers by comparing tables with their partner. show less

ESL Past Simple Passive Activity - Grammar and Speaking: Sentence Completion, Writing, Asking and Answering Questions, Freer Practice - Pair Work In this creative past simple passive activity, students create a general knowledge quiz by completing factual sentences, converting them into questions, and then testing another pair's general knowledge. In pairs, students complete past simple passive sentences with factual information, e.g. 'The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci.' Next, students change their sentences into past simple Wh passive questions, e.g. 'Who was the Mona Lisa painted by?' Finally, students ask their questions to the another pair to test their general knowledge. Pairs score one point for each correct answer. The pair with the highest score at the end wins the quiz. show less

ESL Past Simple Passive Worksheet - Grammar, Reading and Writing Exercises: Rewriting Sentences, Identifying, Gap-fill, Writing an News Report In this comprehensive past simple passive worksheet, students practice past simple active and passive forms in the context of news reports. Students begin by changing sentences about news stories from their active form into the past simple passive form. Students then read a news report and identify and write down eight past simple passive sentences from the report. Next, students rewrite the eight past simple passive sentences in their active form. After that, students complete news reports with the past simple passive form of the verbs in brackets. Afterwards, students practice reading the news reports with a partner. Finally, pairs create their own news report using the past simple passive and read it to the class. show less

ESL Past Simple Passive Worksheet - Grammar and Writing Exercises: Writing Sentences from Prompts, Paragraph Writing In this useful past simple passive worksheet, students write headlines, past simple passive sentences, and a short news story using the past simple passive. First, students write a passive headline and a past simple passive sentence for each topic. Students then choose a topic for a news story and write a news headline and story using at least four examples of the past simple passive. Finally, students present their news stories to the class. show less

ESL Past Simple Passive Game - Grammar and Speaking: Gap-fill, Asking and Answering Questions, Guessing, Controlled Practice - Group and Pair Work In this fun past simple passive game, students practice the past simple passive by completing statements and playing a true or false quiz. First, in two groups, students complete statements with the past simple passive form of the verbs in brackets. Next, students pair up with someone from the other group and take turns reading the statements to their partner, who guesses whether each statement is true or false. Students score themselves one point for each correct guess. The student with the most points at the end of the game wins. Finally, students tell the class which statements they found surprising. show less

ESL Past Simple Passive Game - Grammar and Speaking: Writing and Asking Questions from Prompts, Forming Sentences, Guessing, Controlled and Freer Practice - Group and Pair Work In this free past simple passive game, students write quiz questions from prompts, then ask and answer them in pairs using the past simple passive. In two groups, students read each quiz question prompt and write the question in the past simple passive under the prompt. Next, students pair up with someone from the other group and take turns asking the quiz questions to their partner, e.g. 'When was Facebook created?' Students also read out the three possible answers after each question. Their partner then guesses the answer by making a past simple passive sentence from one of the possible answers, e.g. 'Facebook was created in 2004.' If the answer is correct, the student who guesses scores one point. If the answer is correct and the sentence is grammatically correct, the student scores two points in total. Students continue until they have asked and answered all the quiz questions. The student with the highest score at the end wins the game. show less

ESL Past Simple Passive Worksheet - Grammar Exercises: Gap-fill, Writing Sentences from Prompts In this productive past simple passive worksheet, students learn how to form and use the past simple passive to describe past events in a clear, news-style way. Students start by completing sentences with the past simple passive form of the verbs in brackets. Next, students change past simple active sentences to past simple passive sentences. Students then write out newspaper headlines as complete active or passive past simple sentences. Lastly, students write newspaper headlines in the past simple passive that correspond to pictures. show less

ESL Past Simple Passive Game - Grammar: Writing Sentences from Prompts, Changing Verb Forms, True or False, Guessing - Pair Work In this engaging past simple passive game, students write statements about past beliefs using 'it was' + past participle forms of reporting verbs and then guess whether each statement is true or false. First, students use prompts and the structure 'it was' + 'past participle' to write statements describing past beliefs, putting the reporting verb into the correct past participle form. Next, in pairs, students discuss which statements they think are true and which are false and write their guesses in the 'True or false' column. Pairs score one point for each correct guess. If a pair thinks a statement is false, they can guess the correct answer for an extra point. The pair with the most points at the end of the game wins. show less

ESL Past Simple Passive Activity - Grammar and Speaking: Writing Sentences from Prompts, Discussion, Freer Practice - Group Work In this insightful past simple passive speaking activity, students practice using structures like 'I was told to...' and 'I was allowed to...' to talk about childhood rules, advice, and expectations, and then discuss their reactions. First, students write numbered sentences about their experiences of growing up using verbs in the past simple passive followed by an infinitive with 'to', e.g. 'When I was a child, I was told to look both ways while crossing the road.' In groups (Student A, B, C and D), one student then turns over a card. The letter on the card refers to the student and the number refers to the sentence to be read out. The student corresponding to that letter then reads the numbered sentence to the group. For example, if the card reads C11, Student C reads sentence number 11 to the group. The other students then contribute with their own experiences for the same sentence. After the topic has been discussed, the next student turns over a card, and so on. show less