Catch Up Party

Setup

Prepare some music chosen by/popular with your students. You could even bring some drinks and snacks too if appropriate.

Activity

1. Play some music, and dim the lights if possible.
2. All the students stand up and move around the classroom, talking to each other.
3. The objective is to find out news and/or recent activities from as many other students as they can (using the target language). Students can use real information from their lives or just invent it.
4. After a set time, stop the music and the students return to their seats. They could then exchange the information they found out with a partner as a speaking activity. Or they could write it in sentences using the target language.

Target Language

The Catch Up Party ESL activity is perfect for practising the ‘Present Result’ use of the present perfect simple and present perfect continuous. Explain to the students that recent events/changes use the simple tense, e.g. I’ve just been promoted. Repeated actions use the continuous version, e.g. I’ve been working out a lot.

For higher level students, telling someone else (or writing about) what they heard at the party is a good way to practise reported speech for these tenses as well.

It’s also a great opportunity to teach some informal language and expressions used in this type of situation. How’s it going?, What’s new? and What’ve you been up to? are three such examples. Be sure to teach their correct pronunciation as well!