The students would already have seen the names for the parts of an apartment/house, had some contact with adverbs of frequency (often, always, never), times of day (at night, in the morning, etc.) and a few basic verbs as well as their conjugations (to stroll, to read, to live, etc).
First, using a floor plan drawing on the board, the class went through and labeled the parts of a house based on what they remembered. The instructor made sure to help them with what they did not remember. They also reviewed our adverbs of frequency and our times of day.
Next, the students each had an individualized sheet that would correspond to something like "Tolstoy often reads in the dining room at night." They would come up to the front of the class and show the others the picture. The other students would have to ask things like "What is Tolstoy doing?", "Does he read often or seldom?", and "Where does he read?" The student with the pictures would then answer "Tolstoy is reading," "Tolstoy often reads," etc. Once everyone had asked a question, the student would stick their character up on the board in the correct room--this usually had great comic effect (Anna Karenina was crying in the bathroom). Then the next person would come up and repeat the procedure.
As they went through the activity, the students were filling out a grid for the blanks, forming complete and, for that early point in the semester, fairly complicated sentences. The goal of the activity was to get them to put units of speech that they know together, as well as to review the parts of a house, adverbs of time and frequency, and basic verb conjugations. It was a very visual and interactive activity, so students were always well engaged and involved.