Looking for engaging activities to help your students better understand the preterite tense? Continue reading for some of my favorites! Make sure you grab all the freebies along the way! 🙌🏻

1. BOOM CARDS

Self-checking AND self-grading? YES, PLEASE! If you are looking for a fun, interactive digital activity for your students to practice preterite tense verbs in Spanish, these NO PREP Spanish Boom Cards are just what you need! Students will be engaged and get a great review of preterite verbs as they work their way through the 50 cards in each deck.

You as a teacher need a free Boom Learning account to use Boom Cards with your students, but your students do not need accounts or to log in if you use the Fast Pins option. Simply share a link with them and they click on the link, enter the code, and play the cards. You can still hold students accountable and take advantage of the self-grading feature by having them take a screenshot of the last slide that says complete and their score and send it to you. Here’s a quick video about Fast Pins.

There are more features available with a paid membership like live monitoring and data. If you want data, students will need to log in so you can track them. If they have Google or Microsoft accounts, they can use those credentials to log into Boom. A paid membership is only $25 per year and I think it is worth every penny! I love the data.

See how fun they are for yourself by clicking the previews below!

2. GOOGLE SLIDES

Digital task cards for Google Slides are for anyone looking to reinforce students’ understanding of preterite tense verbs in Spanish in a fun, interactive way. Students will be engaged and get a great review of verbs in el pretérito as they work their way through the 50 Google Slides in each set.

Students will be engaged in activities like:

• choosing the correct verb endings for preterite verbs
• drag and drop conjugation charts for preterite verbs
• filling in the blank with verbs in the preterite tense
• finding errors in sentences and correcting them
• multiple-choice questions
• answering open-ended questions like “¿Qué comiste esta mañana?”

Grab FREE Google Slides for preterite sandal verbs HERE! Click the images below to check out the other preterite tense sets.

Save over 40% on all my fun Google resources for Spanish class with the Spanish Google Activities Mega Bundle.

3. DIGITAL MYSTERY PICTURES

Love super fun, no prep digital activities? If so, then you will love mystery pictures! Your Spanish students will get a ton of practice as they answer a variety of questions in Google Sheets. Best part? Pixel art activities are self-checking! If a student’s answer is correct, part of the hidden picture will be revealed. If a student’s answer is incorrect, the picture will not change. That lets the student know he/she needs to try again. The instant feedback really helps students improve their skills! They love these mystery pictures and so will you!

Grab this FREE digital mystery picture for regular preterite tense verbs HERE.

Check out my other digital mystery pictures for the preterite tense below.

Save 20% on all my digital mystery pictures with the Digital Mystery Pictures Mega Bundle.

4. READING COMPREHENSION DIGITAL MYSTERY PICTURES

Students struggling with reading comprehension and the preterite tense? You need these no-prep digital mystery pictures! Your Spanish students will improve their reading comprehension skills as they read a passage in the preterite tense and answer questions about what they read.

Like the mystery pictures above, these activities are self-checking! If a student’s answer is correct, part of the hidden picture will be revealed. If a student’s answer is incorrect, the picture will not change. That lets the student know he/she needs to try again. The instant feedback really helps students improve their skills! Students love trying to guess what the picture is as they complete the activity. Hint: it has to do with the story!

Save 20% on 50+ reading comprehension mystery pictures with the Reading Comprehension Mystery Picture Mega Bundle. See it HERE.

5. DIGITAL ESCAPE ROOM

Can your students escape the hotel room?? They will have to work together to solve the 6 puzzles in this digital escape room to do so! This engaging escape room was designed to not only give your students a well-rounded review of regular preterite tense verbs but also get them thinking critically. It’s easy for you to assign and students to navigate. All puzzles are embedded right in the Google Slides or Google Sites. No messing around with a bunch of files! Simply share the links to the escape room and Google Form and students are good to go!

This no-prep activity is self-checking. Students input their answers to the puzzles in a Google Form. If a group’s answer is correct, it unlocks the next question on the Google Form. If a group’s answer is incorrect, a message will pop up telling students they need to try again and giving them a hint. That instant feedback makes your job so much easier!

6. TASK CARDS

Task cards are such a fun, versatile tool. Each of these preterite tense task card sets comes with 48 different cards to get your students up and moving while practicing the preterite tense. Students will be engaged as they complete various tasks on the included response sheet like conjugating verbs in the preterite tense, filling in the blank with the correct preterite form of the verb in parentheses, answering multiple-choice translation questions, fixing the incorrect sentences, and answering questions in complete sentences using the preterite tense.

Not sure how to use task cards in class? 15 ideas are included! You can also check out these blog posts I wrote for Secondary Spanish Space: 10 Task Card Ideas for Spanish Class and 5 (More) Ways to Use Task Cards in Spanish Class.

7. TRIVIA GAMES

Looking for a super fun, NO PREP activity to review the preterite tense with your Spanish students? Play this Jeopardy-style trivia game with them! Students will be engaged as they work in teams to answer questions in categories like Conjugation, Fill in the blank, ¿Dónde está el error?, Translation, and Un Poco de Todo. In addition to the traditional point value questions that start at $100 and get increasingly more difficult as students work their way up to the $500 questions, there is also a fun ‘Make a Wager’ option for each category that is like Final Jeopardy.

How I like to play:

I put students in teams of 2-3 (three is ideal) and have teams sit together facing the board. Each team needs a mini-whiteboard, dry erase marker, eraser (a tissue works, too), score sheet, and writing utensil. Have one person on the team be the scorekeeper and a different person be the mini whiteboard writer. The scorekeeper needs to write all the group members’ names on the sheet. Once that is done, I ask the class who has the next birthday (or last birthday, is tallest, etc.) and that person gets to choose the first square. From there I go around the room calling on one person from each group until every student has had a chance to pick a square.

When playing, EVERY team answers the question by discussing quietly as a group and writing the answer on their mini whiteboard. I make sure they keep their answer hidden until it is time to share. Once I think all the teams have an answer (or it has been a reasonable amount of time), I give a ”tres, dos, uno” countdown and teams hold up their mini-whiteboards. I then reveal the answer on the screen and points are awarded to the teams who get it correct. Teams are responsible for keeping track of their own points on their score sheet. Honor system!

I play like this so all teams are engaged and getting a good review, not just the one team who picked the question.

Every five questions or so I have students pass materials one person to the left so all students get a chance to keep score and use the ever-popular mini whiteboards, thus no one can ”check out” or be lazy. I find it builds student confidence, too.

8. GOOGLE FORMS ASSESSMENTS

Self-grading? Yes, please! These digital preterite tense assessments created in Google Forms are self-grading, editable, AND no prep! In addition to using these for a quiz or test, you can also use Google Forms for exit tickets, formative assessments, choice boards, a make-up test for absent students, or about a million other things!

Click the images below to learn more about these preterite tense Google Forms.

Save 25% on all my Google Forms with the Spanish Google Forms Mega Bundle.

9. CONVERSATION CARDS

Give your students a ton of speaking opportunities and practice with the preterite tense with these fun conversation cards! This conversation card set comes with 48 different cards to get your students up and moving while reviewing the preterite tense. Students will be engaged as they answer questions about their lives like what they ate yesterday, where they went after school yesterday, where they traveled last summer, and more. Conversation cards can be used in lots of different fun ways to get students talking in Spanish class. Read three ideas in a blog post HERE.

10. CUCHARAS GAMES

Reinforce preterite tense verb endings in Spanish with Cucharas, the Spanish class version of one of my favorite games growing up, Spoons. Students love collecting all the conjugations of a verb in the preterite tense and racing to grab the spoons! This is a great way to get students engaged and focusing on the details of preterite tense verb endings! There is an included extension activity that has students writing and speaking with the verbs after each round.

OBJECTIVE: Collect all seven cards for one verb (infinitive + all six forms- for example: CORRER, CORRÍ, CORRISTE, CORRIÓ, CORRIMOS, CORRISTEIS y CORRIERON) and/or not be the person left without a spoon! Read more about how to play Cucharas HERE.

Grab this FREE Cucharas game for regular -AR verbs in the preterite tense HERE!

Here are some other preterite Cucharas games you might like!

11. SUB PLANS

Make reading in Spanish class FUN with these no-prep printable activities! There are three print-and-go activities to go along with the comprehensible reading passage for you to choose from: task cards, a crossword puzzle, and worksheets. Talk about an easy Spanish sub plan!

Save 20% on 40+ sets of reading activities with the Spanish Sub Plan Mega Bundle. See it HERE.

I hope these ideas help! If you enjoyed this post, please pin/share it so others can enjoy it, too! Thanks and have a great day!

Looking for even more ideas? You might also like these posts: Preterite vs. Imperfect Activities for Spanish Class and Por y Para Activities for Spanish Class.

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