Directions:

Three trues and a lie is a popular activity that I like to use to review and practice what students learnt in previous classes. It could be a certain tense (pretérito indefinido) or vocabulary (familia).

If you'd like the activity to last longer, start by organizing your students in groups of 4. Each of them has to write 4 sentences about a certain topic that the teacher chooses (what you did last weekend, your family). 3 of the sentences must be true, and one has to be a lie. Give your class an example before they begin.

Then, the students will share their sentences with their group and the others will try to guess the lie.

Ask them to choose the person with the most difficult examples to represent the group.  The chosen students will share their sentences with the whole class, and the different groups will try to guess the lie. Keep score to make it more fun!

I especially use this activity to review how to use the pretérito indefinido. I like to start the week by asking students what they did over the weekend. Having different activities to do that, rather than just ask them the same question every week, is much more exciting for everybody.

If you'd like a shorter version of the activity, students can write just 3 sentences (2 are true, 1 is a lie) and share it with the whole class, instead of working in groups first. Or they can work in groups and each person chooses one sentence (for example, in a group with 3 people, each student makes a sentences, so they'll have 3: 2 of them have to be true, and 1 a lie)

Follow-up activities:

Use this activity to ask questions to the students sharing their sentences. In the previous example (see picture above) don't just ask the group which one is false, go one by one asking for details:

- Aiden, ¿dormiste el sábado 10 horas?
- Sí.
- Entonces es verdadero. ¿Duermes normalmente 10 horas o el sábado dormiste más?
- El sábado dormí más.
- ¿Por qué? ¿Estabas cansado?
- Sí, estaba cansado porque jugué un torneo de fútbol.
- Muy bien. Nevaeh, ¿fuiste a la playa el domingo?
- No.
- Entonces es falso. ¿Qué hiciste el domingo?
- Estuve en casa.