What happened to them?

In this activity, students "receive" actions from other students and later have to produce passive voice sentences to describe what happened during the activity. This will show them why the passive voice is sometimes given preference over the active voice to explain events. You'll need paper slips and tape.  There are suggestions for the commands for each slip at the bottom; however, please remember to use two or more copies of the same commands but also not all of them. Keep only one copy of a few commands to make sure the group will practice singular and plural passive voice.  Here are the steps:

1) Teacher checks the vocabulary from the slips, then has students stand up and make a circle.

2) T uses pieces of tape to stick a slip of paper to the back of each student (printable picture). In order to keep interest in this activity high, T shouldn't allow them to see what the slips contain before the activity. Ss must be told to "do whatever they read on their friends' slips".


3) When every student has a slip on their back, they proceed to act out what they read in their classmates' slips - "hug me", "compliment me", "give me a thumbs up", etc.

4) When T feels they are (not entirely, but almost) finished, T tells the students to recollect what happened to them - starting with whoever was hugged to make it easier. T shows the student that it's going to be difficult to list all the names of the people who hugged him/her. Instead, T encourages said student to "start the sentence with I". Ideally, ss will explain "I was hugged", "She was patted on the back", "They were given high-fives", etc. (if they fail to do this, go straight to the next step)

5) T shows a list of all the actions from the slips written in the passive voice on the board - but with the subjects missing. (picture 2) Ss must then complete the sentences orally and also take turns to write the names of the right students on the correct sentences shown. The main idea is that it doesn't matter who hugged you, but that you were hugged during the activity - when we focus on the receiving end of the action, and not on who performed it, we use the passive voice. T can go over this activity again the following class and have ss remember who was hugged, whose hand was shaken, who was told "You're cool!", etc.

We hope your students will have fun learning about the passive voice! Remember that you know your group, so create more slips and substitute them to your liking. What did you think?