My Last Vacation

Introduction

Hello Students!

The simple past is a verb tense that is used to talk about things that happened or existed before now.

You can also use the simple past to talk about a past state of being, such as the way someone felt about something. This is often expressed with the simple past tense of the verb to be and an adjective, noun, or prepositional phrase.

Wolfgang was proud of his hula hoop victory.

The contest was the highlight of his week.

How to Formulate the Simple Past

For regular verbs, add -ed to the root form of the verb (or just -d if the root form already ends in an e):

Play→Played Type→Typed Listen→Listened Push→Pushed Love→Loved

For irregular verbs, including the verb to be, the simple past forms are more erratic:

See→Saw Build→Built Go→Went Do→Did Rise→Rose Am/Is/Are→Was/Were

The good news is that verbs in the simple past tense (except for the verb to be) don’t need to agree in number with their subjects.

Here you have a funny way to learn the most common irregualr verbs used in English language.

How to Make the Simple Past Negative

Fortunately, there is a formula for making simple past verbs negative, and it’s the same for both regular and irregular verbs (except for the verb to be). The formula is did not + [root form of verb]. You can also use the contraction didn’t instead of did not.

Wolfgang did not brag too much about his hula hoop skills. Wolfgang’s girlfriend didn’t see the contest.

For the verb to be, you don’t need the auxiliary did. When the subject of the sentence is singular, use was not or wasn’t. When the subject is plural, use were not or weren’t.

The third-place winner was not as happy as Wolfgang. The fourth-place winner wasn’t happy at all. The onlookers were not ready to

leave after the contest ended. The contestants weren’t ready to leave either.

Task

The objective of the lesson is that we are going to talk about events that occurred in the past. First, think about the activities you did on your last vacation. These activities were done in the past so, the verb has to be according to the tense that the activities happened.

So, first let's have a check of the Past Simple

Here you can practice only with verbs, just complete the statements with the simple past form of the verbs

Practice verbs in simple past

The next step is practice doing complete sentences in the simple past, so if you are ready click in the link.

Exercises using Past Simple

Process

As I mentioned before, the objective is to produce a writing using simple past tense where you can talk about your last vacation.

Don't be limited, give explanations, try to describe as much as you can the activities you did. Also, try to use connectors to make sentences.

Write a 100 words text talking about your last vacation using simple past.

Evaluation

Your writing will be evaluated according the following points so, be carefull to write an organized text that cover all the points.

Feature	4 Strong	3 Developing	2 Emerging	1 Beginning	Score
Ideas	Establishes a clear focus Uses descriptive language Provides relevant information Communicates creative ideas	Develops a focus Uses some descriptive language Details support idea Communicates original ideas	Attempts focus Ideas not fully developed	Lacks focus and development
Organization	Establishes a strong beginning, middle, and end Demonstrates an orderly flow of ideas	Attempts an adequate introduction and ending Evidence of logical sequencing	Some evidence of a beginning, middle, and end Sequencing is attempted	Little or no organization Relies on single idea
Expression	Uses effective language Uses high-level vocabulary Use of sentence variety	Diverse word choice Uses descriptive words Sentence variety	Limited word choice Basic sentence structure	No sense of sentence structure
Conventions	Few or no errors in: grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuation	Some errors in: grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuation	Has some difficulty in: grammar, spelling, capitalization, punctuation	Little or no evidence of correct grammar, spelling, capitalization or punctuation
Legibility	Easy to read Properly spaced Proper letter formation	Readable with some spacing/forming errors	Difficult to read due to spacing/forming letter	No evidence of spacing/forming letters

Conclusion

To conclude, the purpose of the lesson is to use simple past tense in a real student's context where they feel free to talk about own experiences that happened in relevant past events.

Credits

This lesson was a collaborative work of

Nicole Heredia

Pamela Morales

Omar Moyano