What Were You Doing When the Lights Went Out? (Past Continuous vs Past Simple) worksheet

This is an activity based on a really nice video that you can find on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1GGYf2LFBg). It makes for a 50-60 minute lesson. Students enjoy it very much (mine found the video hilarious) and it´s very effective. The video is a news report about a blackout, and what different people were doing when it happened. It allows students to see how the past continuous works (as opposed to the past simple), and to understand what it is used for. You can start by introducing the activity with a little discussion, e.g. asking students if they know what a blackout is, and asking them if they can remember the last time it happened in their town and what they were doing at that time. Then, distribute the worksheet and focus their attention on exercise 1. Tell them that they´re going to hear people being interviewed on TV about what they were doing during a blackout. Ask them to circle the activities they hear. Make sure they understand the vocabulary. Check their answers. Then, play the video again and ask them to number the actions in order of appearance. What two actions are not on the worksheet? Once this is done, ask them to complete the sentences in exercise number 4 using either the past simple or the past continuous. They should try and do this individually (or later in pairs) from memory. Tell them that the sentences are all taken from the video, and that they are said in the order in which they appear on the worksheet. Play the video again for them to check their answers. Then, correct the activity. In order to do this, you could play the video once more and, this time, ask students to shout "Stop!" when they hear one of the sentences. Then you can write the correct answers on the blackboard.

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