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There are four past tenses, and they are similar in structure to the present tenses. A good thing to remember about the past tense is that if the past participle form of the verb is used, than it cannot be a continuous tense, and if the verb+ing is used, than it will be a continuous tense. The first is the past simple, formed by the subject and the conjugated past participle of the verb, such as "I went". The negative is formed by adding the auxiliary verb "did", such as "I did not go". The question is formed by inverting the auxiliary verb and the subject, and the present participle verb, such as "Did you go?". There are many irregular verbs that need to be memorized, such as the example "go" and "went" used above. The past simple is used for actions that were completed in the past at a certain time, or to ask questions about actions in the past that implies they were completed in the past. The past simple is also useful for ordering events. Examples would be, "When did you start your new job?", "I started my new job in September". An activity you could do for the "activate" phase of the lesson would be to have the students piece together a picture story, using a worksheet with picture prompts of actions for the students to put in a certain order and explain the story in the past simple tense. The past continuous tense is formed with the subject, the auxiliary verb "was/were", and the verb+ing, such as, "I was shopping". The negative is formed by adding "not" in between the auxiliary verb "was/were" and the main verb, such as "I was not shopping". The question is formed by inverting the auxiliary verb and the main verb, such as "Were you shopping?" This tense is used to talk about actions in progress at a past time, and often used for interrupted past actions, such as, "I was reading last night until I fell asleep." An activity for teaching would be to show the students a picture for 2 minutes, with people doing many different activities, then turn the picture over and the students have to recall what the people in the picture were doing, such as "She was talking on the phone". The past perfect tense is formed with the subject, the auxiliary verb "had", and the past participle form of the verb, such as, "They had learned". To form the negative, we add "not" in between the auxiliary verb "had" and the main verb, such as "They had not learned". To form the question we invert the auxiliary verb and the main verb, such as "Had they learned?". This tense is used for actions completed at a past time before another past action. It's the "past in the past". For example, "By the time they got to 4th grade, they had learned all the state capitals." Or, "I hadn't thought about that until you mentioned it." An activity for teaching would be showing historical photos and asking the students what had just happened when the photo was taken? The past perfect continuous tense is formed with the subject, the auxiliary verbs "had" + "been" + verb+ing, such as "He had been running". To form the negative, we add "not" in between the two auxiliary verbs, such as "He hadn't been running". To form the question, we invert "had" and the subject, to say "Had he been running?". It is used for actions that began before a time in the past and continued until a point of time in the past and it's not indicated if it continued beyond that point of time. For example, "When I saw Sarah last night, she had been crying for 3 hours". Before I saw Sarah, she had already been crying for three hours, and it's not indicated if she continued to cry after I saw her. An activity for teaching would be to give the students a prompt, such as "She lost weight..." and have the students fill in the reason why for the prompt such as, "Because she had been working out."