A selection of English ESL telling the time story printables

Listen intently to understand the story behind the song. Read first, and listen to the song 3 times. The first time it's just to listen, the second time it's to write the answers, and the last part is to check if everything's in order.

Blue Jeans- Lana del Rey. Listen to understand meaning, and storytelling

Use the time expressions and the past perfect tense to write stories.

Time Expressions with the Past Perfect

gap filling worksheet about the first episode of the TV show "One Upon a Time"

Once Upon a Time

To practise time linkers and story telling (past simple and continuous). Two-part exercise: 1) Teacher cut up the sentences and ss put the story in order 2) ss need to recreate the story according to the pictures and given time linkers. They can write their sentences. It can be done as a group work or individually or pair work.

Time linkers in story about Mary

This picture story is a twisted version of the story of the Princess and the Frog Prince. Students have to repeat the story telling task three times, adding more and more details each time. Question prompts are provided to help students add more details to the story. On Page 2. there are text chunks provided to do a more guided version of the same task.

The Frog Prince (Picture story)

Material contains exercises for summarizing and systematizing students' grammatical knowledge and working out practical skills of using the Present Simple Tense, telling the time by the clock, telling stories about the daily schedule; the material can be used during face-to-face and distance learning.

Task "Everyday Life" (Daily Routine; Telling The Time; Present Simple)

Fill in the blanks, listen intently and use the correct negatives or positives given in the audio Listen before you write (I recommend listening 3 times to get maximum understanding)

Imperatives with Backstreet Boys

Students have to roll a die 6 times to find the content for a short story they have to write. Follow the poster for directions. Remember to make the students write the results down - happy writing :-)

Roll a Weird Story

Fairy tales, Sleeping Beauty. Reading long texts with simple past: Once upon a time there lived a good king and his queen. They had no children for many years and were very sad.

Then one day, the queen gave birth to a lovely baby girl and the whole kingdom was happy. There was a grand celebration and all the fairies in the kingdom were invited. But the king forgot to invite an old fairy. She came to the celebrations but was very angry. Soon it was time to gift the baby with special wishes. The good fairies wished her well and said,

Sleeping Beauty

Conversational Game with a competitive edge. Depending on the level of the students, give them the game.  I recommend different time limits per topic based on level. A1= 20 sec. A2= 30 sec. B1 =40 secs and so on. This allows the game to be used for all levels.

Noughts and Crosses

A pain to prep, but it was so worth it.



First we studied the American tall tale about Paul Bunyan. They loved it! Then students worked together to complete the various activities. 



Each student should have a different 2nd page with a different prompt for the story writing. I gave students about a minute before making them pass the story to the next group member. Groups were about 3-4 Ss in each. Each person should be writing on a story at all times. 

They couldn't talk, but laughed the whole time. Wish I had recorded some of the stories they came up with :)  



This lesson was designed for a 2 hour class of adult intermediates. They loved it :) 

Conversation lesson on Stories and Storytelling

Give your students time to work through the vocabulary. Encourage pair work and help with difficult words. Students can use a dictionary to find the meaning of some of the difficult words in the tables and this can prepare them for the final task. Once the students have studied the tables, they should work in pairs and describe the photo.

A picture is worth a thousand words - 8

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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how to interpret what was said in English

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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>

Get here and you are ready to study in English at university

17 Telling the time story English ESL worksheets pdf & doc