A selection of English ESL past simple vs continuous tense printables with guided grammar production, grammar practice

This fun, Halloween-themed ESL/EFL picture story worksheet helps students practise the past simple and past continuous tenses through a colourful nine-picture story.

The story follows two brothers whose Halloween pumpkin-carving activity goes terribly wrong when the younger brother accidentally drops their jack-o’-lantern. After an argument and some tears, a friendly squirrel helps them make a new one, leading to a happy ending.

Language goal: Practise describing past events, narrating a sequence of actions, and distinguishing between completed actions and activities in progress.

Grammar focus: Past simple and past continuous, including affirmative statements, irregular verbs, and the use of while to connect simultaneous actions.

Theme: Halloween, family, sibling relationships, emotions, problem-solving, and cooperation.

Age group: Primary school learners (approximately 8–12 years old).

CEFR level: A2-B1 (because of the phrasal verbs "showed up" and "turned out")

Task: Students look at the nine illustrations and complete the sentences by writing the missing verbs in the correct tense (past simple or past continuous). The infinitive forms are provided in brackets as clues.

Page 2 contains the KEY, with the correct answers highlighted in green.

Interactive quiz: An interactive gapfill quiz complements the printable worksheet. Students type their answers into the boxes to complete the sentences, allowing them to practise and check their understanding digitally.

Jack o’Lantern Trouble - Picture Story Gapfill With KEY

This fun, Halloween-themed ESL/EFL picture story helps students practise the past simple and past continuous tenses through a humorous story set in an office.

The worksheet features nine colourful illustrations showing coworkers preparing Halloween decorations, dealing with their strict boss, and coming up with a clever plan that leads to an unexpected, happy ending.

Students complete the sentences beneath each picture by filling in the missing verbs in the correct tense, using the infinitives provided in brackets.

Language goal: Practising narrative tenses, describing past events, and understanding the difference between completed actions and ongoing activities in the past.

Grammar focus: Past simple and past continuous, including affirmative statements, regular and irregular verbs, and interrupted actions.

Theme: Halloween, office life, teamwork, problem-solving, and celebrations.

CEFR level: A2–B1 (Pre-intermediate to Intermediate)

Age group: Teenagers and adults

Page 2 contains the KEY, with the correct verb forms highlighted in green.

An interactive quiz complements the printable worksheet. Students type their answers into the boxes to complete the sentences, making it suitable for classroom practice, homework, or independent online learning.

Halloween At The Office - Picture Story Gapfill + KEY

This colourful, nine-picture ESL/EFL worksheet tells the story of two rabbit brothers who quarrel over a carrot, refuse to speak to each other, and eventually learn the importance of family and helping one another.

Students follow the illustrated story and complete the sentences by putting the verbs in brackets into the correct tense: past simple or past continuous. The activity helps learners practise affirmative and negative verb forms, irregular verbs, and the use of past tenses to describe completed actions and ongoing situations in the past.

Language goal: Narrative skills, storytelling, reading comprehension, and describing past events.

Grammar: Past simple and past continuous, affirmative and negative forms, regular and irregular verbs.

Theme: Family relationships, sibling rivalry, forgiveness, kindness, and helping others.

CEFR level: A2–B1 (Pre-intermediate to Intermediate).

Intended age group: Children aged 9–14, particularly upper-primary and lower-secondary learners.

Activity type: Picture story with grammar gap-fill exercises.

Page 2 contains the KEY with the correct answers highlighted in green.

Interactive quiz included! An interactive gap-fill quiz complements the printable worksheet. Students type their answers into the boxes to complete the story, making the activity suitable for individual practice, homework, or classroom use.

The Quarrelling Rabbit Brothers - Gapfill With KEY

This fun, colorful Halloween-themed ESL/EFL worksheet helps students develop their storytelling and creative writing skills while practising the past simple and past continuous tenses.

Students follow a nine-picture story about two brothers who are carving a jack-o’-lantern for Halloween. When the younger brother accidentally drops the pumpkin, his older brother gets upset. Luckily, a friendly squirrel comes to the rescue and helps the boys work together to create an even more beautiful jack-o’-lantern!

Language goals: Developing narrative writing skills, describing past events, sequencing actions, and expressing emotions.

Grammar focus: Past simple and past continuous, including the use of when and while to connect events and describe interrupted actions.

Theme: Halloween, pumpkin carving, sibling relationships, emotions, friendship, cooperation, and problem-solving.

CEFR level: A2–B1 (Elementary to Intermediate)

Intended age group: Children aged 8–12, but also suitable for younger teens.

Worksheet activity: Students look at the nine pictures and write sentences describing what happened in each scene, using the past simple and past continuous tenses.

Page 2 contains the KEY, with example answers for all nine pictures.

Interactive quiz: An interactive version complements the printable worksheet. Students type their answers into the text boxes. After submitting each answer, an example solution is displayed to help them compare and improve their writing. Since this is an open-ended storytelling activity, students' answers are not automatically corrected or scored.

Ideal for Halloween lessons, grammar revision, creative writing practice, individual work, or classroom storytelling activities.

Jack-o-Lantern Trouble - A Picture Story

This engaging ESL/EFL picture story worksheet helps students practise the past simple and past continuous tenses through a humorous animal fable about two rabbit brothers who argue over a carrot, avoid each other, and eventually discover the importance of family loyalty.

Students look at nine colourful cartoon illustrations and write sentences describing what happened in each scene. They practise narrating past events, describing actions in progress, sequencing events, and using when and while.

The story encourages discussion about sibling relationships, arguments, forgiveness, clever problem-solving, and the moral that siblings can count on each other even when they don't always get along.

CEFR level: A2–B1

Age group: Children and young teens (9–15)

Grammar: Past simple and past continuous

Language skills: Creative writing, storytelling, narrative sequencing

Worksheet type: Picture story, open-ended writing task

Page 2 contains the KEY with example solutions.

An interactive quiz is also available to complement the printable worksheet. Students type their answers into open-ended boxes to describe each picture and practise their storytelling skills. When they submit each answer, an example solution will be shown but their answers will not be corrected and scored.

The Quarrelling Rabbit Brothers - A Picture Story

This Halloween-themed ESL/EFL picture story helps adult students practise the past simple and past continuous tenses while developing their storytelling, narrative writing and picture-description skills.

Students look at nine colourful illustrations and write a story about a group of office workers who want to celebrate Halloween despite their strict boss's objections. An unexpected visitor leads to a surprising and funny ending.

The activity encourages students to describe past events, combine the past simple and past continuous, and use sequencing expressions to connect events into a coherent story.

Language goals: Storytelling, describing past events, narrative writing, sequencing events.

Grammar: Past simple and past continuous.

Theme: Halloween, office life, teamwork, problem-solving, celebrations.

CEFR level: A2–B1 (Elementary to Intermediate).

Age group: Adults

Page 2 contains the KEY with example answers for all nine pictures.

Interactive quiz: An interactive version complements the printable worksheet. Students type their own sentences into the answer boxes. After submitting each answer, an example solution is displayed. Because this is an open-ended writing activity, students' answers are not automatically corrected or scored.

Halloween At The Office - Picture Story With KEY

Practice of Past Simple, Past Continuous and 'used to' with musical experiences

Guided grammar production

Past simple vs continuous tense

Culture, intercultural communication, cross-cultural communication

Adjectives to describe feelings, emotions

Adjectives to describe personality and character

Adjectives: Gradable / Non-gradable adjectives

Articles: Definite or indefinite article (a, an or the)

BE + infinitive structures (e.g. he was to become famous)

Clauses of contrast (e.g.  although, while)

Clauses of purpose (e.g. in order to, so that, so as to)

Clauses of reason (e.g. because, because of, due to, as, since)

Cleft sentences (e.g. It's Joey we're looking for)

Comparison: Comparative adjectives and structures

Comparison: Superlative adjectives and structures

Conditional 2 (second conditional) - would

Conditionals: Conditional phrases (e.g. unless, provided that, as long as)

Conjunctions (aka connectives, e.g. and, but, or, so, then)

Contractions (shortened forms, e.g. don't, aren't, etc.)

Determiners (words that can come before nouns)

Formal and informal English (politeness or colloquial language)

Future perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Future perfect simple and continuous (progressive) tense

Future phrases (e.g. be about to, bound to, likely to, due to, set to + INF)

Homonyms (two words with the same pronunciation - homophones and homographs)

It as preparatory subject (e.g. it's raining, it's nice of you to)

Linking verbs (aka copulas, e.g. I am a student)

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Nouns: Collective nouns (team, class, family, committee)

Nouns: Proper nouns (names of people, cities, companies)

Oxymorons (phrases with words of contradictory meaning, e.g. living dead)

Participles: Past participle (e.g. HAVING DONE)

Participles: Present participle (e.g. DOING)

Parts of Speech (aka word classes, e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

Past perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Phonetics (pronunciation, IPA, phonetic symbols)

Plural nouns: regular plurals with S ending

Prefixes (e.g. A, UN, IM, DIS, MIS, EN, etc. )

Prepositions vs adverbs (e.g. before me, saw him before.)

Prepositions: Double prepositions (e.g. out of)

Prepositions: Participle prepositions (e.g. pending, concerning)

Prepositions: Phrase prepositions (e.g. by means of)

Present perfect continuous (progressive) tense

Present perfect simple or present continuous tense

Present simple tense: S for third person singular verbs

Present simple vs continuous (progressive) tense

Pronouns: EACH OTHER, ONE ANOTHER (reciprocal pronouns)

Pronouns: Possessive pronouns (e.g. my, mine)

Pronouns: Reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself, yourself))

Pronouns: SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, EVERYBODY, NO ONE, NOTHING, etc.

Pronouns: THIS, THAT, THESE, THOSE (demonstratives)

Pronouns: YOU and THEY to talk about people in general

Quantifiers (e.g. some, many, much, any, few, little)

Questions: WH questions (open-ended questions)

Reported speech: reported questions (indirect questions)

There is / there are / there was / there were / there will be, etc.

Verbs: Transitive or intransitive verbs (words that can or cannot stand with objects)

Working with Paragraphs: ordering, titling

Role play, miming, drama activity or improv game

Pictionary (picture dictionary) or picture matching

Writing an opinion essay (persuasive essay)

Learners who are Pre-A1 have just begun learning English and will first learn how to:<ul><li>Say the letters in the alphabet and numbers</li><li>Say hello, talk about names and age</li><li>Name the colors and dates, express likes and dislikes</li></ul>

Absolute beginners who have begun to learn the letters and numbers

Learners taking the A1 Elementary exam should be able to:<ul><li>Introduce themselves and ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, things he/she has, people he/she knows.</li><li>Communicate using very basic phrases as long as the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: common adjectives & adverbs of frequency, going to, how much/how many, imperatives, I'd like, 's – possessive, common prepositions of place and time, present simple & continuous, there is/are</li></ul>

A very basic tourist level, which is enough for buying food and a bus ticket

Learners taking the A2 Pre-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand sentences and frequently used expressions (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).</li><li>Complete tasks that are routine and exchange information about familiar matters.</li><li>Describe matters of immediate need in simple terms.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: countable/uncountable nouns, adverbs of frequency, future will/going to, much/many, present perfect, past simple, past continuous, common phrasal verbs, common modals: can/should</li></ul>

A tourist who can do basic conversations about the past, present and future

Learners taking the B1 Intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand points regarding family, work, school or leisure-related topics.</li><li>Deal with most travel situations in areas where the language is spoken.</li><li>Create simple texts on topics of personal interest.</li><li>Describe experiences, events, dreams, and ambitions, as well as opinions or plans in brief.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: question tags, intensifiers: too/enough, future tenses, past tenses, modals, conditionals, wh-questions in the past</li></ul>

Learners who can deal with both familiar and routine situations, in friendly and work contexts

Learners taking the B2 Upper-intermediate exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialization.</li><li>Interact with fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without difficulty for either party.</li><li>Produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain an opinion on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.</li><li>Main grammar points to know: perfect tenses, mixed conditionals, modals in the present, phrasal verbs, reported speech, wish, relative clauses</li></ul>

The level where you can be a tour guide for your foreign friends and talk about a lot of topics, even abstract ones, with ease and fluency

Learners taking the C1 Advanced exam should be able to: Express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. Understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts. Produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, using linking phrases (=words that connect ideas between sentences). Main grammar points to know: inversion, mixed conditionals, modals in the past, all passive forms, phrasal verbs (all patterns), wish/if only for regrets

Learners who can smoothly communicate in every walk of life, read long texts and write well

Learners taking the C2 Proficient exam should be able to:<ul><li>Understand almost everything read or heard with ease.</li><li>Summarize information from a variety of sources into a coherent presentation.</li><li>Express themselves using precise meaning in complex scenarios.</li><li>Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations</li></ul>

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7 Past simple vs continuous tense, Guided grammar production, Grammar Practice English ESL worksheets pdf & doc