Use of present continuous tense

Name of lesson plan activity: Use of present continuous tense

Skill focus: Grammar

Teacher name: Y.U. Kaminskay-Kletskova

School name: Gymnasium « Erudite»,Kyiv

Target students: 10–11years old ( 5 form )

Materials used in class: Blackboard, chalk, slips, handouts, laptop, pre-prepared video of people doing actions

Time: 45 minutes

Lesson plan

1. Objective of the lesson:

General aim: enable the students to understand and organise ideas and information, form sentences using the given clues and frame their own sentences.

Specific aim: enable the students to use present continuous tense in real life situations.

2. Instructions for teaching the lesson:

Method  of teaching — presentation, production and practice.

Presentation (10 mins)

Before the lesson, the teacher is to have prepared a video of various people doing actions. She uses the video to teach the present continuous tense to her students by freeze-framing the pictures after each scene and asking students questions like: ‘What am I doing?’; ‘What is Sasha doing?’; ‘What is Nina doing?’, ‘What are Sasha and  Nina doing?’ In this way, students will be prompted to use the teaching point. Once she elicits their answers, the teacher writes them on the board.

◗You are brushing your teeth.

◗ He is ironing his shirt.

◗She is blow-drying her hair.

◗They are watering the plants.

Then she highlights the structure (e.g. subject + is/am/are + ing form of the verb to be used for present continuous tense). Then she makes the students understand that this structure is used for actions going on at the time of speaking. She divides the students into groups. She then freeze frames all the scenes and encourages the students to discuss each scene using the structure written on the blackboard.

Production (10 mins)

The teacher regroups the students and gives five slips of paper with present continuous tense sentences on them to each group. She then instructs the students: ‘Each slip has a sentence written in present continuous form. Each group will either mime or draw the action on the blackboard. Select a leader who will mime or draw on the blackboard. The other groups will guess the action in turns. The group guessing the correct action will earn five points. If a group fails, the next group gets the chance to speak. The group which mimes or draws the best also earns four points. The group earning maximum points is declared the winner.

Practice (25mins)

Handouts are given to each student.

Exercise 1:

Fill in the blanks using the present continuous tense of the verbs given in brackets. For example:

1. Sam____________ karate (learn).

2. My friends ____________ funds for the poor (collect).

Exercise 2:

The teacher shows a small story on their laptop and then asks the students to discuss it in their respective groups and tell the story in their own words using the present continuous tense. She then makes each group narrate their stories. While the students are discussing this, the teacher monitors and guides them.