Past time expressions snap
Instructions for teachers
Photocopy and cut up the cards below so there is one pack per two or three students. As preparation for the game or as a grammar presentation, get each group of students to arrange their cards into 4 columns by the preposition used when we are talking about the past only (though some “ago” expressions are used with “in” when talking about the future). Check their answers and elicit the different uses: “at” with clock times, “in” with longer times like months and years, “ago” with lengths of time like numbers of hours, “no preposition” with expressions starting or meaning “last” or “this”.
Get the students to shuffle the cards up again, deal the cards between them and put their packs flat down on the table without looking at them. The students now play the traditional card game “Snap” – they take turns showing the top card from their pack, and if it takes the same preposition as the last one their partner turned over the first person to shout “Snap!” takes all the cards that had been turned over up to that point. The game continues until one person has all the cards, making them the winner. If anyone shouts “Snap” when the cards don’t match they have to give two cards from their pack to each of their partners as punishment.
As an additional activity, you can get students to put the cards into time order and tell a story with them.
Cards to cut up/ Suggested answers
| IN | ON | AGO | AT | NO PREP. |
| 1955 | Monday | eighty years | seven o’clock | last week |
| July | Monday morning | two days | two minutes past three | last July |
| the summer | 12 March | two decades | midday | yesterday evening |
| the 1970’s | Tuesday 31 January | a week | noon | last night |
| the 60’s | Tuesday morning | one and a half hours | midnight | last Tuesday |
| the 19th century | Wednesday afternoon | two and a half months | 3 p.m. | this morning |
| July last year | Friday evening | ninety minutes | a quarter to seven | the day before yesterday |
| July 1999 | Xmas day | thirty seconds | four o’clock in the afternoon | last year |
| the year two thousand | my birthday | two thousand years | about two o’clock in the morning | last month |
| 1066 | Xmas Eve | a few minutes | exactly seven fifteen | yesterday |
PDF for easy saving and printing:
Related pages
Prepositions of time page – NEW LINK
Snap and pelmanism in EFL classes (TEFLtastic classics Part Seven)
