This semester started off with ETA Madison “Maddy” Mele and her co-teachers at SMAN 1 Demak teaching simple past tense to the 10th-grade classes. Maddy led activities to help students practice recognizing, speak and write a text that is in the simple past tense.

The first activity was a game called chair swap. The students sat in a circle with one student standing in the middle. The student in the middle would say something they did the week before, like “I ate nasi.”

If any of the students had also eaten nasi they had to stand up and find a new chair in the circle. The students loved this game and were sliding all over the floors trying to get to a new chair.

After the chair swap, the students were put into groups of six and sat in circles on the ground to write team stories. The students would have one minute to write the beginning of a story in the past tense, they then would pass their story to the left. The students would read their new sentences and write the next sentence to the story. They came up with some very funny stories and had a blast writing in the simple past tense!

Madison “Maddy” Mele is currently teaching at SMAN 1 Demak, Central Java.