A complete unit on asking questions in English, built for classes where the teacher has a blackboard and the pupils have an exercise book and nothing else.
Secondary pupils can often answer questions in English long before they can ask them. That imbalance matters more than it first appears: a pupil who cannot ask cannot find out, cannot check, and cannot hold a conversation. This unit treats question formation as a practical skill rather than a grammar table.
It covers yes and no questions, wh- questions, questions with the verb to be, questions in the past, and the tag questions that appear constantly in real speech. Each form is introduced through an activity in which asking is genuinely necessary, so pupils have a reason to get the word order right beyond pleasing the teacher.
Everything is designed for a room with no photocopier. All the material a lesson needs fits on one blackboard, and the reference pages are laid out so that a teacher can copy them by hand into a notebook once and reuse them for years.
Lesson two asks five pupils to hold cards and physically rearrange themselves into a question. Classes remember this months later, and it costs nothing but chalk and paper.
The unit suggests a gentle signal rather than a correction: repeat the question in its correct form as if you were thinking aloud, then answer. Pupils self-correct quickly under this routine.
The final lesson sends pupils to interview a member of the monastery or school. It is the point where the unit stops being grammar and becomes usable.
Ten lessons that build the present simple out of what pupils already do every day, from waking before dawn to sweeping the compound at dusk.
Nine lessons that build the past simple and past continuous out of pupils own memories, with a bank of irregular verbs organised by sound rather than by list.