As many of the activities below are variations on activities in my articles on teaching Present Simple or Present Continuous on their own, one easy way into teaching both tenses together is by adding one extra tense to an activity halfway through it. Students might need a list of suitable people, actions, objects etc to help them come up with ideas. Students take turns trying to make a pair of similar sentences, one in Present Simple and the other in Present Continuous, neither of which is also true for their partner, e.g. For a longer game, ask them to continue finding examples until you stop the game. Each student takes turns choosing the rank of question they want to answer. 
Alternatively, you could only have one person from each team running each time and award points to the first to touch the right place, or eliminate people each time and give points to the people who are still in the game at the end. For example, one student says bored and their partners eventually guess that the sentence is I feel bored on the train rather than their first guesses of Im feeling bored now and I feel bored with English. This activity will really get your students talking, and thinking, too. Ask them to describe what is happening in the picture and what the habits related to those times are such as how often those things happen and who takes part, using their imagination whenever they dont know those things. Another way of bringing Present Simple into miming games actually combines the use of the two tenses. You can make this into a game by one student writing one sentence and then passing it to the next student to continue. Students can start the game when they have filled in about 50% of the sentences on their worksheets, or better classes can just do the whole game orally without a writing stage to prepare. Hes heading the ball towards the net and Thats strange.
The students unfold the completed postcards that they receive and tell the class if the holiday makes sense and sounds nice and why. Board games and more games you can print and take to class can be found here.Also you will find templates for building yours. My dad sometimes [to help] when my mom [to cook] dinner. For a quick game, ask students to sit down as they find a single pair of sentences showing ways in which they are unique and stop a couple of minutes after the first person sits down or when most people have. These betting games have been designed to greatly help in practising vocabulary and sentences. They get up very early. for postal worker). It is total fun and highly engaging fun lessons with these resources. Exchanges should include what they are doing now and a description of how that is like or unlike their normal routines. Another way to bring Present Simple into miming activities is to reverse the stages mentioned above, getting students to do a speaking activity with the Present Simple tense first. One student chooses one of them without telling anyone else which one they are thinking of and describes what they can imagine happening at one moment in time (not necessarily matching the real time of day) and other things that happen there until their partner guesses which thing is being described. They can then think about which tenses they used for each activity and why. If you like, have your students work together to make the list. moving three squares because they talked for two minutes minus fifteen seconds pausing about My studies or Using English. Save hours of lesson preparation time with the Entire BusyTeacher Library. Pronunciation Games & Interactive Exercises - Click Here! For convenience we have EASY, MEDIUM & HIGH LEVELS. Easy categorization of the games by levels of students.
Students continue in the same way until they guess the job correctly. Keep playing until you win. People there are mostly sleeping right now, but I think some people are probably partying. Although real job application letters (= cover letters) will include a lot of Present Perfect and Simple Past, it is possible to produce a reasonable one with Present Simple and Continuous sentences like Im designing a new way of storing photos and I work with people from 60 different countries. Their partner then asks them questions about their classmates - everyday habits as well as what is going on right now. a picture of someone chucking rubbish in the street with He is throwing garbage onto the pavement. At the moment, Im the only person lying here. I'm playing football in the park now, you should join in. To save sitting around, you could also have each student chatting with several people at the same time, maybe with the teacher playing the role of the internet and passing the pieces of paper back and forth. To add a game element, after students finish writing their postcards they can vote on which holiday sounds best or most realistic, and/or guess which place is being written about. Give students a pack of cards or worksheet with some key words for making Present Simple and Present Continuous personal questions such as bored for Are you feeling bored? and argue for How often do you argue with your family? One student should choose a word and make a suitable question, then flip a coin to see if they can ask the question to someone else in their group (heads for ask) or will have to answer their question themselves (tails for tell). This can be turned into more of a game by getting students to time how long their partners can talk about each topic, taking off the time spent pausing, repeating themselves, going off topic, etc. When the game is finished, the postcards are passed one more time. Templates help you to quickly build customized games and activities for your ESL/EFL lessons. The easiest way is to start with those Present Continuous mimes and then have an additional stage where students discuss how often, when, where, why etc they actually do those things. In order to make sure that both tenses are used and to cut down the randomness of the game format a bit, you might want to give students a worksheet with sentence stems like At this moment, and Other people. To do this for points, students choose how many points they want to go for and get some percentage of that many points depending on how well they answer the question, with zero points for the (understandable) reaction of politely refusing to answer a very personal question, one point for answering an easy question in full, up to five points for fully answering a taboo question. Simply spin the wheel and voila! I [to play] football in the park now, you should join in. We offer board games, powerpoint games and more for the classroom and one to one teaching. Teaching English Using Games & Activities, Present Simple and Continuous activities with no or minimal resources. To play the game, students will race to earn fifteen points. He is chatting to his colleagues and Jose almost always does that at work and He is washing his clothes and most people here wash their clothes every day. He is playing the guitar and I sometimes play the guitar. It is all about practice and play. Browse games by levels. One student will pretend to be a tour guide for a place in their home country (or another place of their choosing). I can [to see] them [to come] now! Your list of prompts might include the following: every morning, all around meright nowtodayevery dayetc. I'll do it later, I'm making a sandwich at the moment.
You can also give bonus points for two sentences with the same verb in both tenses, e.g. A calmer version, also suitable for adults and quieter classes, is giving each student copies of both of those (s/es) and -ing cards, and students racing to hold up the right one of the two cards depending on what they see and hear. What time does your granddad get up? and What colour shoes is your youngest sister wearing today? Every time they get the answer Im afraid I dont know or I have (absolutely) no idea, they get one point. Give students words which are useful for describing contemporary life like civil servants and alter and ask students to use them to agree on and write down Present Simple and Present Continuous statements like Politicians only look after their friends and Education is improving. What are your favorite activities for using the two? Have students work with a partner to talk about a picture. This can also be played as a mingling game, with students going around trying to find pairs of sentences that no other person in the class can say is true about them too. Their partner should listen and ask for further details. Old time favourite hangman games are here to add to the fun. And if you are interested in more, you should follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English. After someone has guessed the action correctly, have students volunteer sentences using the simple present which they think are true of the person giving the charade. Before or after practice activities like those suggested here, students can discuss the meanings of the two tenses that they have just used or are about to use (temporary actions/ in progress now versus routines/ habits/ repeated actions) and maybe key words like at the moment and often that go with each of them. Laura usually [to arrive] early for class. Suitable topics include ecology, helping people, studying and being a good family member. In this category, you will find games that practice: Grammar, Vocabulary, Reading, Spelling, Pronunciation and Listening skills.
Copyright 2002 - 2022 UsingEnglish.com Ltd. 36 fun classroom activities for Present Simple and Continuous. P.S. Including speaking activities with minimal resources, ideas for worksheets, and possible uses of technology. Students imagine that they are chatting with a friend of theirs in another company while they are working, using some kind of online instant messaging service like the text messaging part of Skype. Both of us are feeling tired. What does Miguel eat for lunch every day? Present Simple examples could include People work too long hours for no good reason and Parents dont discipline their children enough. So why not teach and learn English with this game. perfume for I rarely wear _____________ or Im wearing ____________ now. Grammar Games & Interactive Exercises - Click Here! One way to use that idea is to imagine that the students in their group are sports commentators, with one describing what is happening and the other saying how usual or unusual those things are, e.g. Possibilities include interviewing musicians on their routines and album that they are presently recording, explaining why someone is not available to speak now and their normal routines, and being interrupted by things in the background while talking about routines on the phone. After ranking the questions, students ask each other questions of those different levels. They should describe the area and its attractions to the rest of the class, and their classmates should feel free to ask questions about the location. The game can be played with just one Present Simple guess for each Present Continuous description, or continuing with Present Simple guesses until they say something that isnt true. (You can find some interesting and unusual pictures at here. | Category: Teaching English Using Games & Activities
Includes the best of BusyTeacher: Try These 6 Simple Activities About Families. Show students photos of people involved in cultural activities such as taking part in festivals or rites of passage, either on the board, as cut-up pictures, or on worksheets. The pictures can be found online or drawn by the students. If you want to make it into more of a game, you can allow students to add details from their imaginations, with their partners guessing which things were made up after they ask for more details. Have students play for a certain amount of time or until they run out of questions. Start by making a list of questions about taboo subjects how old are you, how much do you weigh, how often do you shave your armpits, what color underwear are you wearing, etc. Who is Sergio sitting next to right now? Then have the other members of the class ask yes/no questions about the activity using the simple present or the present continuous. I'll meet you later, I'm doing homework right now. Have your students complete these sentences in writing or work with a partner to complete the sentences orally. If you want to add a game element, students can vote on the most interesting sounding place and/ or best description. What do your students know about their home countries? Examples include What healthy things that you do would you recommend to your partner? and What is changing in your city? If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. If their partner does know the answer, they dont get a point and its someone elses turn to ask the next question. Ask students to design posters showing people doing bad things and explaining what good people do instead, e.g. Present Simple and Continuous workplace tour roleplays, Worksheets for practice of Present Simple and Continuous, Present Simple and Continuous miming and discussion, Present Simple and Continuous discussion then miming, Present Simple and Continuous miming and guessing game, Present Simple and Continuous miming and questions, Present Simple and Continuous taboo topics games, Present Simple and Continuous discussion questions, Discuss the Present Simple and Continuous statements, Present Simple and Continuous discuss and agree, Present Simple and Continuous Ask and Tell, Present Simple and Continuous Answer Me short answers card game, Present Simple and Continuous presentations, Present Simple and Continuous sentence completion guessing game, Technology-based activities for Present Simple and Continuous, Present Simple and Continuous personalised video viewing game, Present Simple and Continuous guess both lives from the video still, 56 communicative activities to teach Present Simple, Blocks games for different language points, 35 fun classroom practice activities for Present Continuous (Present Progressive), 56 fun classroom activities for the Present Simple tense, Fun video tasks to practise Present Simple and Present Continuous, Superlative Adjectives- Classroom Activities, Classroom activities for colour vocabulary, Classroom activities for teaching opposites, 19 simple, fun and effective ESL board games. If they can get one of the responses that they hold in their hand when they ask questions like Are you wearing a jumper? and Do your parents like cheese?, they can discard that card.
They are married and have three kids now. Have you met my sister? They later compare their ideas with another group and get one point for each one that the other group agrees is true and hadnt written down themselves. After successfully guessing, students can discuss whether those things are probably true or not. They shouldnt say the part that is written on their worksheet, because that is what the other students should try and guess. They can easily do so with a combination of these two tenses with topics like my work, my company, clothes and my classmates. This is only the directory for interactive games and exercises. UsingEnglish.com is partnering with Gymglish to give you a free one-month trial of this Although obviously the format is becoming rarer and rarer in modern life, postcards are probably still among the contexts in which a mix of Present Continuous and Present Simple can most naturally be written down together, with examples like I get up every morning and go straight to the pool. Students work together to make true present sentences about the people in their group like We both/ all, perhaps getting one point for each sentence that they come up with which no other group in the class has written. Bitching at Work above can also be done with the help of technology, and the internet can be used for research for the activity Present Simple and Continuous Tour Guides Practice and for Describing Cultural Practices Present Simple and Continuous Bluff. When they have finished, their partner will guess which bits they made up. Follow the links to browse the variety of games offered. Really/ Thats interesting. I'll do it later, I [to make] a sandwich at the moment. They change the guard once an hour. For example, someone might ask the following questions: What color are Kims shoes? Im wearing them. They can choose the topics themselves, choose from a pack of cards, or work their way around a board game. Find a regular time to have a study group session together and Go to reception and ask to be put in touch with someone who can speak to you now. Designed to help you bring fun to the class, our PPT games are excellent classroom games for classes with white boards and computers. However, the most useful thing you can do with Present Simple and Present Continuous is teach and practise them together, contrasting their meanings and uses. Have your students guess who is in the picture and give their reasons why using statements in the simple present and present continuous. Students imagine that they are giving a tour and describe both things going on as they are looking and more general information about that place with sentences like You can see a ship is passing under the bridge, which is why it is open. All of the questions should be written in the simple present and the present continuous. My dad sometimes helps when my mom is cooking dinner. We almost always feel tired in English class. Students may need a suggested list of verbs, time expressions and/ or topics to help them come up with ideas. To add points, you can give a point to the first team who have all their members at the right wall. This can be made more fun by students folding the paper each time to hide what has been written so far, in which case you will maybe need to give them some help with what should come next such as sentence stems for each stage, e.g. There are timers here and gadgets that are useful to both ESL teachers and students. Then, the class rank these questions in order from those they would most like to be asked to those they would least like to be asked, and divide the ranked list into five different groups. As with the other articles in this series, the activities below are given in order by what kinds of resources you need, from none or few in the first section to using technology in the last section, with ideas for using photocopies in the middle. Use Class PIN to share Baamboozle+ games with your students. Are you doing right now? How well do you know your present classmates? They should take turns explaining how bad their job is, both in general and today, trying to outdo each other. You can then have a stage where students try to remember the correct tenses to complete filled in versions of those worksheets. Students deal out a pack of cards saying Yes, I am, No, he doesnt, Yes, they are etc in groups of two to four people. Unlike what many textbooks do, I strongly recommend making sure students understand and can produce that general difference in meaning before introducing any examples of state verbs (= stative verbs) that dont take -ing. We almost never wear pink. Maybe someone is going to meet him there. Jenny usually walks to work, but today she is cycling. The other numbers they can put go from 2 for ones which are okay to 5 for ones which are completely taboo and likely to stop all conversation (What colour underwear are you wearing? etc). What is your sister? when they have more than one sister), they also lose their chance to get a point. You can also include some where only one of the two tenses are likely, e.g. This can be made into more of a game by the same person phoning again and again and getting a different excuse each time. For example, students could mime actions that the teacher imagines is typical in their job and then discuss which of those things are actually normal (nowadays), or students could mime things people do at the dinner table and then discuss which table manners are most important in their own and other countries. Reading/Spelling Games & Interactive Exercises - Click Here. Practice the present simple vs. the present continuous tenses by playing this snakes and ladders fun game. Who knew their classmates best? After that, students check any unknown vocabulary with the teacher, then do a miming stage using the Present Continuous tense when they guess what their partner is acting out (as it is the natural tense for describing an ongoing action). With the board game version, students work their way round it by moving on one square for each thirty-second period they can talk about the topic written in the square they are on, e.g. Students who arent working can describe their school, university library, etc. Charades is a great way to elicit the present continuous tense your students. Tens of thousands of people use these boats every day for Venice). By: Alex Case 
Other hints could include time expressions (at the moment, right now, once a week, etc), pictures showing routines or people frozen in mid-action, or blanked sentences held up. Im not/ I dont.. Students can then try to remember what tenses those questions were in and/ or make other good and taboo questions with the same two tenses, perhaps for another group to play the same game with. They can also make a poster or brochure with such sentences written on it. Our ESL fun games here include : Snakes and Ladders, Hangman, Spelling games, Wheel of Fortune, TV Games(Betting Game), Mazes, Memory Games, Matching exercises, Sequencing exercises, Picture Quizzes, Catch it and more. Activate your free month of lessons (special offer for new To make it more interesting and challenging, you could ask them to make sentences about their classmates and what is happening on the screen instead, e.g. I'm running faster than you in this race! I therefore recommend moving fairly quickly on from any lessons on those tenses on their own to combining them in the ways explained below. Many textbooks have very unrealistic texts to contrast Present Simple and Present Continuous that go Javier usually eats toast for breakfast in his dirty studio flat. They have made my lessons fun and I have no doubt yours will be fun too. They can then discuss if they think that description is true in each case. For example, student might ask the following questions: Do you do this every day? They have twenty questions they can ask before they must guess what the verb is. Oh great! This works best with students passing a piece of paper back and forth to communicate their complaints. Its also possible to do this activity with actual technology, as long as you can set up accounts especially for it or students are happy to share their regular contact details with each other. Games to practice English pronunciation, phonetics and phonics. Action and stateverbs will therefore be dealt with separately in my next article in this series. Students take turns asking Present Simple and Present Continuous questions to which they think the answer will be Yes, I am or Yes, I do to each other, with one point for each Yes answer to questions like Are you sitting down? and Do you like cheese? You can also expand the game to allow Yes, (s)he is and Yes, (s)he does questions about their friends and family. Have you met my sister? However, real photos rarely produce enough of this kind of language, so the best activity is for students to imagine that some blank pieces of paper are photos and to describe them using just those two tenses. It opens ten or twenty times a day. and The man standing there is a Beefeater. the boy in the Pixar animation Up, either of the main characters in the Eddie Murphy comedy Changing Places, or the teacher in the John Cleese film Clockwise. Students rank some Present Simple and Present Continuous questions that you have given them with between 1 and 5 points, from 1 point for ones which are good for starting and continuing conversations, including with strangers (Is anyone sitting here? etc). If you are the type of person who prefers to have games on powerpoint or as printable handouts, we have been thinking of you. This activity is simple. I [to have] a party now, you should [to come] over! The discussion should happen in the simple present and the present continuous. excellent online English training course. You can practise some of the natural uses of Present Simple and Present Continuous by giving a set of roleplay cards describing those situations to students for them to work their way through. They then earn that many points for their answer. Students choose a gapped sentence or sentence stem from the worksheet that they are given and say just the words that they would add to it to make a true statement about themselves, e.g. Students love snakes and ladders. Each section is arranged with the ones which Id use most often in my own classes nearest the top. You might also have students describe the picture as well. Jenny usually [to walk] to work, but today she [to cycle]. For example, you brush your teeth twice a day; or you use crest toothpaste. In order to contrast the two tenses, you can also throw in a few topics that probably only need one of the two tenses like My mornings and Present projects.
Alternatively, you could only have one person from each team running each time and award points to the first to touch the right place, or eliminate people each time and give points to the people who are still in the game at the end. For example, one student says bored and their partners eventually guess that the sentence is I feel bored on the train rather than their first guesses of Im feeling bored now and I feel bored with English. This activity will really get your students talking, and thinking, too. Ask them to describe what is happening in the picture and what the habits related to those times are such as how often those things happen and who takes part, using their imagination whenever they dont know those things. Another way of bringing Present Simple into miming games actually combines the use of the two tenses. You can make this into a game by one student writing one sentence and then passing it to the next student to continue. Students can start the game when they have filled in about 50% of the sentences on their worksheets, or better classes can just do the whole game orally without a writing stage to prepare. Hes heading the ball towards the net and Thats strange. The students unfold the completed postcards that they receive and tell the class if the holiday makes sense and sounds nice and why. Board games and more games you can print and take to class can be found here.Also you will find templates for building yours. My dad sometimes [to help] when my mom [to cook] dinner. For a quick game, ask students to sit down as they find a single pair of sentences showing ways in which they are unique and stop a couple of minutes after the first person sits down or when most people have. These betting games have been designed to greatly help in practising vocabulary and sentences. They get up very early. for postal worker). It is total fun and highly engaging fun lessons with these resources. Exchanges should include what they are doing now and a description of how that is like or unlike their normal routines. Another way to bring Present Simple into miming activities is to reverse the stages mentioned above, getting students to do a speaking activity with the Present Simple tense first. One student chooses one of them without telling anyone else which one they are thinking of and describes what they can imagine happening at one moment in time (not necessarily matching the real time of day) and other things that happen there until their partner guesses which thing is being described. They can then think about which tenses they used for each activity and why. If you like, have your students work together to make the list. moving three squares because they talked for two minutes minus fifteen seconds pausing about My studies or Using English. Save hours of lesson preparation time with the Entire BusyTeacher Library. Pronunciation Games & Interactive Exercises - Click Here! For convenience we have EASY, MEDIUM & HIGH LEVELS. Easy categorization of the games by levels of students.
Students continue in the same way until they guess the job correctly. Keep playing until you win. People there are mostly sleeping right now, but I think some people are probably partying. Although real job application letters (= cover letters) will include a lot of Present Perfect and Simple Past, it is possible to produce a reasonable one with Present Simple and Continuous sentences like Im designing a new way of storing photos and I work with people from 60 different countries. Their partner then asks them questions about their classmates - everyday habits as well as what is going on right now. a picture of someone chucking rubbish in the street with He is throwing garbage onto the pavement. At the moment, Im the only person lying here. I'm playing football in the park now, you should join in. To save sitting around, you could also have each student chatting with several people at the same time, maybe with the teacher playing the role of the internet and passing the pieces of paper back and forth. To add a game element, after students finish writing their postcards they can vote on which holiday sounds best or most realistic, and/or guess which place is being written about. Give students a pack of cards or worksheet with some key words for making Present Simple and Present Continuous personal questions such as bored for Are you feeling bored? and argue for How often do you argue with your family? One student should choose a word and make a suitable question, then flip a coin to see if they can ask the question to someone else in their group (heads for ask) or will have to answer their question themselves (tails for tell). This can be turned into more of a game by getting students to time how long their partners can talk about each topic, taking off the time spent pausing, repeating themselves, going off topic, etc. When the game is finished, the postcards are passed one more time. Templates help you to quickly build customized games and activities for your ESL/EFL lessons. The easiest way is to start with those Present Continuous mimes and then have an additional stage where students discuss how often, when, where, why etc they actually do those things. In order to make sure that both tenses are used and to cut down the randomness of the game format a bit, you might want to give students a worksheet with sentence stems like At this moment, and Other people. To do this for points, students choose how many points they want to go for and get some percentage of that many points depending on how well they answer the question, with zero points for the (understandable) reaction of politely refusing to answer a very personal question, one point for answering an easy question in full, up to five points for fully answering a taboo question. Simply spin the wheel and voila! I [to play] football in the park now, you should join in. We offer board games, powerpoint games and more for the classroom and one to one teaching. Teaching English Using Games & Activities, Present Simple and Continuous activities with no or minimal resources. To play the game, students will race to earn fifteen points. He is chatting to his colleagues and Jose almost always does that at work and He is washing his clothes and most people here wash their clothes every day. He is playing the guitar and I sometimes play the guitar. It is all about practice and play. Browse games by levels. One student will pretend to be a tour guide for a place in their home country (or another place of their choosing). I can [to see] them [to come] now! Your list of prompts might include the following: every morning, all around meright nowtodayevery dayetc. I'll do it later, I'm making a sandwich at the moment.
You can also give bonus points for two sentences with the same verb in both tenses, e.g. A calmer version, also suitable for adults and quieter classes, is giving each student copies of both of those (s/es) and -ing cards, and students racing to hold up the right one of the two cards depending on what they see and hear. What time does your granddad get up? and What colour shoes is your youngest sister wearing today? Every time they get the answer Im afraid I dont know or I have (absolutely) no idea, they get one point. Give students words which are useful for describing contemporary life like civil servants and alter and ask students to use them to agree on and write down Present Simple and Present Continuous statements like Politicians only look after their friends and Education is improving. What are your favorite activities for using the two? Have students work with a partner to talk about a picture. This can also be played as a mingling game, with students going around trying to find pairs of sentences that no other person in the class can say is true about them too. Their partner should listen and ask for further details. Old time favourite hangman games are here to add to the fun. And if you are interested in more, you should follow our Facebook page where we share more about creative, non-boring ways to teach English. After someone has guessed the action correctly, have students volunteer sentences using the simple present which they think are true of the person giving the charade. Before or after practice activities like those suggested here, students can discuss the meanings of the two tenses that they have just used or are about to use (temporary actions/ in progress now versus routines/ habits/ repeated actions) and maybe key words like at the moment and often that go with each of them. Laura usually [to arrive] early for class. Suitable topics include ecology, helping people, studying and being a good family member. In this category, you will find games that practice: Grammar, Vocabulary, Reading, Spelling, Pronunciation and Listening skills.
Copyright 2002 - 2022 UsingEnglish.com Ltd. 36 fun classroom activities for Present Simple and Continuous. P.S. Including speaking activities with minimal resources, ideas for worksheets, and possible uses of technology. Students imagine that they are chatting with a friend of theirs in another company while they are working, using some kind of online instant messaging service like the text messaging part of Skype. Both of us are feeling tired. What does Miguel eat for lunch every day? Present Simple examples could include People work too long hours for no good reason and Parents dont discipline their children enough. So why not teach and learn English with this game. perfume for I rarely wear _____________ or Im wearing ____________ now. Grammar Games & Interactive Exercises - Click Here! One way to use that idea is to imagine that the students in their group are sports commentators, with one describing what is happening and the other saying how usual or unusual those things are, e.g. Possibilities include interviewing musicians on their routines and album that they are presently recording, explaining why someone is not available to speak now and their normal routines, and being interrupted by things in the background while talking about routines on the phone. After ranking the questions, students ask each other questions of those different levels. They should describe the area and its attractions to the rest of the class, and their classmates should feel free to ask questions about the location. The game can be played with just one Present Simple guess for each Present Continuous description, or continuing with Present Simple guesses until they say something that isnt true. (You can find some interesting and unusual pictures at here. | Category: Teaching English Using Games & Activities Includes the best of BusyTeacher: Try These 6 Simple Activities About Families. Show students photos of people involved in cultural activities such as taking part in festivals or rites of passage, either on the board, as cut-up pictures, or on worksheets. The pictures can be found online or drawn by the students. If you want to make it into more of a game, you can allow students to add details from their imaginations, with their partners guessing which things were made up after they ask for more details. Have students play for a certain amount of time or until they run out of questions. Start by making a list of questions about taboo subjects how old are you, how much do you weigh, how often do you shave your armpits, what color underwear are you wearing, etc. Who is Sergio sitting next to right now? Then have the other members of the class ask yes/no questions about the activity using the simple present or the present continuous. I'll meet you later, I'm doing homework right now. Have your students complete these sentences in writing or work with a partner to complete the sentences orally. If you want to add a game element, students can vote on the most interesting sounding place and/ or best description. What do your students know about their home countries? Examples include What healthy things that you do would you recommend to your partner? and What is changing in your city? If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. If their partner does know the answer, they dont get a point and its someone elses turn to ask the next question. Ask students to design posters showing people doing bad things and explaining what good people do instead, e.g. Present Simple and Continuous workplace tour roleplays, Worksheets for practice of Present Simple and Continuous, Present Simple and Continuous miming and discussion, Present Simple and Continuous discussion then miming, Present Simple and Continuous miming and guessing game, Present Simple and Continuous miming and questions, Present Simple and Continuous taboo topics games, Present Simple and Continuous discussion questions, Discuss the Present Simple and Continuous statements, Present Simple and Continuous discuss and agree, Present Simple and Continuous Ask and Tell, Present Simple and Continuous Answer Me short answers card game, Present Simple and Continuous presentations, Present Simple and Continuous sentence completion guessing game, Technology-based activities for Present Simple and Continuous, Present Simple and Continuous personalised video viewing game, Present Simple and Continuous guess both lives from the video still, 56 communicative activities to teach Present Simple, Blocks games for different language points, 35 fun classroom practice activities for Present Continuous (Present Progressive), 56 fun classroom activities for the Present Simple tense, Fun video tasks to practise Present Simple and Present Continuous, Superlative Adjectives- Classroom Activities, Classroom activities for colour vocabulary, Classroom activities for teaching opposites, 19 simple, fun and effective ESL board games. If they can get one of the responses that they hold in their hand when they ask questions like Are you wearing a jumper? and Do your parents like cheese?, they can discard that card.
They are married and have three kids now. Have you met my sister? They later compare their ideas with another group and get one point for each one that the other group agrees is true and hadnt written down themselves. After successfully guessing, students can discuss whether those things are probably true or not. They shouldnt say the part that is written on their worksheet, because that is what the other students should try and guess. They can easily do so with a combination of these two tenses with topics like my work, my company, clothes and my classmates. This is only the directory for interactive games and exercises. UsingEnglish.com is partnering with Gymglish to give you a free one-month trial of this Although obviously the format is becoming rarer and rarer in modern life, postcards are probably still among the contexts in which a mix of Present Continuous and Present Simple can most naturally be written down together, with examples like I get up every morning and go straight to the pool. Students work together to make true present sentences about the people in their group like We both/ all, perhaps getting one point for each sentence that they come up with which no other group in the class has written. Bitching at Work above can also be done with the help of technology, and the internet can be used for research for the activity Present Simple and Continuous Tour Guides Practice and for Describing Cultural Practices Present Simple and Continuous Bluff. When they have finished, their partner will guess which bits they made up. Follow the links to browse the variety of games offered. Really/ Thats interesting. I'll do it later, I [to make] a sandwich at the moment. They change the guard once an hour. For example, someone might ask the following questions: What color are Kims shoes? Im wearing them. They can choose the topics themselves, choose from a pack of cards, or work their way around a board game. Find a regular time to have a study group session together and Go to reception and ask to be put in touch with someone who can speak to you now. Designed to help you bring fun to the class, our PPT games are excellent classroom games for classes with white boards and computers. However, the most useful thing you can do with Present Simple and Present Continuous is teach and practise them together, contrasting their meanings and uses. Have your students guess who is in the picture and give their reasons why using statements in the simple present and present continuous. Students imagine that they are giving a tour and describe both things going on as they are looking and more general information about that place with sentences like You can see a ship is passing under the bridge, which is why it is open. All of the questions should be written in the simple present and the present continuous. My dad sometimes helps when my mom is cooking dinner. We almost always feel tired in English class. Students may need a suggested list of verbs, time expressions and/ or topics to help them come up with ideas. To add points, you can give a point to the first team who have all their members at the right wall. This can be made more fun by students folding the paper each time to hide what has been written so far, in which case you will maybe need to give them some help with what should come next such as sentence stems for each stage, e.g. There are timers here and gadgets that are useful to both ESL teachers and students. Then, the class rank these questions in order from those they would most like to be asked to those they would least like to be asked, and divide the ranked list into five different groups. As with the other articles in this series, the activities below are given in order by what kinds of resources you need, from none or few in the first section to using technology in the last section, with ideas for using photocopies in the middle. Use Class PIN to share Baamboozle+ games with your students. Are you doing right now? How well do you know your present classmates? They should take turns explaining how bad their job is, both in general and today, trying to outdo each other. You can then have a stage where students try to remember the correct tenses to complete filled in versions of those worksheets. Students deal out a pack of cards saying Yes, I am, No, he doesnt, Yes, they are etc in groups of two to four people. Unlike what many textbooks do, I strongly recommend making sure students understand and can produce that general difference in meaning before introducing any examples of state verbs (= stative verbs) that dont take -ing. We almost never wear pink. Maybe someone is going to meet him there. Jenny usually walks to work, but today she is cycling. The other numbers they can put go from 2 for ones which are okay to 5 for ones which are completely taboo and likely to stop all conversation (What colour underwear are you wearing? etc). What is your sister? when they have more than one sister), they also lose their chance to get a point. You can also include some where only one of the two tenses are likely, e.g. This can be made into more of a game by the same person phoning again and again and getting a different excuse each time. For example, students could mime actions that the teacher imagines is typical in their job and then discuss which of those things are actually normal (nowadays), or students could mime things people do at the dinner table and then discuss which table manners are most important in their own and other countries. Reading/Spelling Games & Interactive Exercises - Click Here. Practice the present simple vs. the present continuous tenses by playing this snakes and ladders fun game. Who knew their classmates best? After that, students check any unknown vocabulary with the teacher, then do a miming stage using the Present Continuous tense when they guess what their partner is acting out (as it is the natural tense for describing an ongoing action). With the board game version, students work their way round it by moving on one square for each thirty-second period they can talk about the topic written in the square they are on, e.g. Students who arent working can describe their school, university library, etc. Charades is a great way to elicit the present continuous tense your students. Tens of thousands of people use these boats every day for Venice). By: Alex Case Other hints could include time expressions (at the moment, right now, once a week, etc), pictures showing routines or people frozen in mid-action, or blanked sentences held up. Im not/ I dont.. Students can then try to remember what tenses those questions were in and/ or make other good and taboo questions with the same two tenses, perhaps for another group to play the same game with. They can also make a poster or brochure with such sentences written on it. Our ESL fun games here include : Snakes and Ladders, Hangman, Spelling games, Wheel of Fortune, TV Games(Betting Game), Mazes, Memory Games, Matching exercises, Sequencing exercises, Picture Quizzes, Catch it and more. Activate your free month of lessons (special offer for new To make it more interesting and challenging, you could ask them to make sentences about their classmates and what is happening on the screen instead, e.g. I'm running faster than you in this race! I therefore recommend moving fairly quickly on from any lessons on those tenses on their own to combining them in the ways explained below. Many textbooks have very unrealistic texts to contrast Present Simple and Present Continuous that go Javier usually eats toast for breakfast in his dirty studio flat. They have made my lessons fun and I have no doubt yours will be fun too. They can then discuss if they think that description is true in each case. For example, student might ask the following questions: Do you do this every day? They have twenty questions they can ask before they must guess what the verb is. Oh great! This works best with students passing a piece of paper back and forth to communicate their complaints. Its also possible to do this activity with actual technology, as long as you can set up accounts especially for it or students are happy to share their regular contact details with each other. Games to practice English pronunciation, phonetics and phonics. Action and stateverbs will therefore be dealt with separately in my next article in this series. Students take turns asking Present Simple and Present Continuous questions to which they think the answer will be Yes, I am or Yes, I do to each other, with one point for each Yes answer to questions like Are you sitting down? and Do you like cheese? You can also expand the game to allow Yes, (s)he is and Yes, (s)he does questions about their friends and family. Have you met my sister? However, real photos rarely produce enough of this kind of language, so the best activity is for students to imagine that some blank pieces of paper are photos and to describe them using just those two tenses. It opens ten or twenty times a day. and The man standing there is a Beefeater. the boy in the Pixar animation Up, either of the main characters in the Eddie Murphy comedy Changing Places, or the teacher in the John Cleese film Clockwise. Students rank some Present Simple and Present Continuous questions that you have given them with between 1 and 5 points, from 1 point for ones which are good for starting and continuing conversations, including with strangers (Is anyone sitting here? etc). If you are the type of person who prefers to have games on powerpoint or as printable handouts, we have been thinking of you. This activity is simple. I [to have] a party now, you should [to come] over! The discussion should happen in the simple present and the present continuous. excellent online English training course. You can practise some of the natural uses of Present Simple and Present Continuous by giving a set of roleplay cards describing those situations to students for them to work their way through. They then earn that many points for their answer. Students choose a gapped sentence or sentence stem from the worksheet that they are given and say just the words that they would add to it to make a true statement about themselves, e.g. Students love snakes and ladders. Each section is arranged with the ones which Id use most often in my own classes nearest the top. You might also have students describe the picture as well. Jenny usually [to walk] to work, but today she [to cycle]. For example, you brush your teeth twice a day; or you use crest toothpaste. In order to contrast the two tenses, you can also throw in a few topics that probably only need one of the two tenses like My mornings and Present projects.