The Passive: Engage

Students in 5 Seconds!
by aoife mcloughlin | posted in:
Motivating Teenagers,
Uncategorized | 2
aoife mcloughlin

English
Language
School was
Broken
into!

The Passive
isnʼt the most
exciting of grammar points now is it? Itʼs
no second conditional, thatʼs for sure!!
Hereʼs one way of engaging your
students from the second you enter the
room.

Enter your classroom in distress (practice

your ‘shockedʼ face in the mirror
beforehand) and wait for your students
reactions. Inform your students that a
terrible crime was committed in the
school last night and that students are
now being questioned by the police.

Teacher: ‘Have you heard what

happened?ʼ

Students: ‘No…..?ʼ

Students will ask you more questions.

Use your talents and acting skills without
giving too much away!

Everyone should be very engaged by your

story so far…… now, for the news story!!

Tell your students the story has already

been reported in the local paper. Bring a
newspaper into class with you, open it
and pretend to read the story from it.
Paste your story to a page of the
newspaper out of students view. Tell your
students to listen carefully as you read
but not to take any notes. (This is a great
dictogloss task!)

Hereʼs a link to a text I use, (Burglary at

English Language School), but you can
adapt it to suit your own school/students
if you wish!

Put students into pairs and ask them to

discuss the story and what they heard. At
this stage, they will probably have
realised that its part of the lesson, but
youʼll find that they are all still curious to
know what happens!!

Now, read the story for a second time and

this time, instruct your students to take
note of the main ideas. Ask your students
to work with their partner to compare
their notes and get feedback.

Get them to work together and explain

any unknown vocabulary to each other.
Get feedback and drill some
pronunciation of tricky vocabulary on the
board.

Now, assign different partners and give

two minutes to discuss what grammar
point they think you will be focusing on
today. If nobody is aware itʼs the Passive
Voice, write a sample sentence from the
text on the whiteboard. Now ask
students to underline all the passive voice
examples from the text and begin eliciting
the rules.

A highly engaging and fun way of

introducing the passive in context to
students…….Do you have any more
ideas?