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. I [to play] football in the park now, you should join in. Copyright 2002 - 2022 UsingEnglish.com Ltd. 36 fun classroom activities for Present Simple and Continuous. Jenny usually [to walk] to work, but today she [to cycle]. I keep them in a drawer.

Charades is a great way to elicit the present continuous tense your students. My dad sometimes helps when my mom is cooking dinner. Suitable topics include ecology, helping people, studying and being a good family member. They have made my lessons fun and I have no doubt yours will be fun too. One person closes their eyes and the other people in the group ask them questions about people in other groups with Present Continuous questions like Who is John sitting next to? and Present Simple questions like What does William do? Students might need a list of suggested question stems and/ or topics to help them come up with ideas. 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. | Category: Teaching English Using Games & Activities Are you doing right now? 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. We use cookies to give you the best online experience. If they ask a question which it isnt possible for their partner to answer, for example because they dont have such a person in their family or the question is ambiguous (e.g. For convenience we have EASY, MEDIUM & HIGH LEVELS. excellent online English training course. A great game adapted for your learning and teaching.

Easy categorization of the games by levels of students. 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. | Topic: Learning and Teaching, I have recently published 56 communicative activities to teach Present Simple and 35 for practising Present Continuous, often combined with things like frequency expressions and pronunciation to make lessons on these rather basic tenses more useful. It's 8am and they are going to school now. They love partying.

Have your students complete these sentences in writing or work with a partner to complete the sentences orally.

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. How well do you know your present classmates? Simply have one person act out an activity they do on a regular basis, (such as brushing their teeth, studying, or starting a car) and have the rest of the class make present continuous statements that guess at that action. You might also have students describe the picture as well. 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. I'll do it later, I'm making a sandwich at the moment. Board games and more games you can print and take to class can be found here.Also you will find templates for building yours. Its surprisingly easy to create interesting questions that include just Present Continuous and/ or Present Simple, or questions that produce those tenses in student answers. perfume for I rarely wear _____________ or Im wearing ____________ now. Group five, the ones they least want to be asked, are worth five points. 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.

Present Continuous ones would be mainly about changes in the world like Life is improving for most ordinary people and The government is making the right changes to improve the countrys economy. The thing described can be an action (e.g. These activities from the first section can also be done with worksheets to accompany them: Present Simple and Continuous Make Me Say Yes, Present Simple and Continuous things in common game, Present Simple and Continuous time zones guessing game, Present Simple and Continuous describing photos extended speaking, People you dont actually know so well present tenses game, Present Simple and Continuous postcards competition, Present Simple and Continuous postcards chain writing game, Present Simple and Continuous tour guides practice, Famous places Present Simple and Continuous guessing game, Present Simple and Continuous guessing from hints games, Describing cultural practices Present Simple and Continuous bluff. What is your sister? when they have more than one sister), they also lose their chance to get a point. Even fairly low level students can gain from extended speaking tasks similar to the presentation tasks in the IELTS exam and those in the Inside Out series of textbooks. Save hours of lesson preparation time with the Entire BusyTeacher Library. When people take vacations, they enjoy sharing their experiences with people they care about. 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. One student chooses someone who they know such as a member of their family and describes something that they are (probably) doing right at that moment, such as My father is working. In the post card they can describe what they are doing right now using the present continuous and talk about their everyday routines using the simple present. 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. The students unfold the completed postcards that they receive and tell the class if the holiday makes sense and sounds nice and why.

I'll do it later, I [to make] a sandwich at the moment. Action and stateverbs will therefore be dealt with separately in my next article in this series. This can be made more fun by students folding the paper each time so that what has been written so far cant be seen by the next person writing, similar to the drawing game Consequences.

The person with fewest cards left in their hand at the end of the game is the winner.

Maybe someone is going to meet him there. Another way of using the idea of postcards to practise Present Simple and Present Continuous in a game-like way is for students to write descriptions of their holidays line by line, passing each postcard to be continued by another student or group each time. It is all about practice and play. 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. They can easily do so with a combination of these two tenses with topics like my work, my company, clothes and my classmates. To play the game, students will race to earn fifteen points. 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. 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. 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. If you enjoyed this article, please help spread it by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. Then have the other members of the class ask yes/no questions about the activity using the simple present or the present continuous. They change the guard once an hour. Here we have the games carefully laid out for you. I'm running faster than you in this race! If students get stuck, or are likely to, you might want to allow negative sentences like Neither of us in wearing pink. What does Miguel eat for lunch every day? I can [to see] them [to come] now! Im wearing them. Both of us are feeling tired. It opens ten or twenty times a day. and The man standing there is a Beefeater. Students work in groups of two to four. You should also include some normal, non-taboo questions in your list. If you have a question about the English language and would like to ask one of our many English teachers and language experts, please click the button below to let us know: Summary: Interactive classroom activities for using both present tenses together, comparing and contrasting their uses. 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. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. They have twenty questions they can ask before they must guess what the verb is. The discussion should happen in the simple present and the present continuous. Each person works with a partner for the activity. Other examples include Hes smoking But he doesnt smoke and Hes flying to New York But hes scared of flying. Its tune is used all over the world for Big Ben) or cities (Hes pushing that big stick into the bottom of the canal to move. Added to the good news are the templates we offer that you can use to create customized games for your classroom and teaching. For example, you can play the Make Me Say Yes game below with just Present Simple questions like Do you brush your teeth every morning? and then add Present Continuous questions like Are you sitting down?. 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. Note that for all of the miming activities described here you will need insist on the person miming continuing until their partner guesses, because otherwise the use of Present Continuous is not realistic to describe the action. I'll meet you later, I'm doing homework right now. Students might need a list of suitable people, actions, objects etc to help them come up with ideas.

Students continue in the same way until they guess the job correctly. If you want to score, students get one point for each excuse which their partner doesnt successfully object to or eventually accepts. Oh great! Miming is much more well-known as an activity to practise just Present Continuous with sentences like Im jumping and Youre running, but it is possible and useful to add Present Simple to that. They get up very early. for postal worker). Im wearing a vest. Upgrade. People can ask for more details if they like, although they dont have to answer these questions if they dont want to. Their classmates then confirm or deny the truth of that statement. 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. If you want to add a game element, students can vote on the most interesting sounding place and/ or best description. )Students should describe what they see using both the simple present and the present continuous. 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. He is playing the guitar and I sometimes play the guitar. The teacher will need to prepare some suitable sentences or key words before the activity, and maybe the two cards to hold up (although students can easily make their own with a pen and scrap paper). UsingEnglish.com is partnering with Gymglish to give you a free one-month trial of this I'll meet you later, I [to do] homework right now. She [to live] near you. I'm playing football in the park now, you should join in. Complete the sentences using the correct form of the verbs. How aware are your students as to what is going on around them? If you like, review with your class how to address postcards. Games to practice English pronunciation, phonetics and phonics. Designed to help you bring fun to the class, our PPT games are excellent classroom games for classes with white boards and computers. The places can be individual sites (Its striking twelve. 70 ways to improve your English 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. 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. A classmate chooses a question at that level, and the player answers it. Follow the links to browse the variety of games offered. So give them a chance to share what they know with their classmates in this fun activity. Good citizens take it home or put it in a bin. This works best with students passing a piece of paper back and forth to communicate their complaints. Tens of thousands of people use these boats every day for Venice). They live in Canada. Students run and touch one of two walls depending on what tense they hear or think should be used. Have one person choose a verb or activity for the class to guess. So why not teach and learn English with this game. Jenny usually walks to work, but today she is cycling. If you give students a map with time zones on it, they can describe one place on it using both present tenses until their partners guess where they are talking about, e.g. After a certain amount of time, have students change roles. Particularly if you want to practise family vocabulary, it might be worth giving students a worksheet with suggested people and questions. Have you met my sister?

Have students play for a certain amount of time or until they run out of questions. When the game is finished, the postcards are passed one more time. Use Class PIN to share Baamboozle+ games with your students. 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. They will therefore have to be careful about asking questions which are too personal in case they have to tell those things about themselves.

Students who might have difficulty calculating time zones or choosing actions to describe might benefit from a worksheet with both of those things on it, maybe even one which is tailor-made with the approximate times in some places at the time when that class is happening.

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.

They can then discuss if they think that description is true in each case. Reading/Spelling Games & Interactive Exercises - Click Here. Pronunciation Games & Interactive Exercises - Click Here! Choose a movie in which someone has a regular life which is suddenly upset by something, e.g. They then choose one of the phrases and talk about how often, when, why etc people do that thing until their partner guesses which one it is. On a students turn, she chooses a question, which she will either answer or ask her partner. One person closes their eyes. 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. Another way of bringing Present Simple into miming games actually combines the use of the two tenses. Every morning, Jason [to brush] his teeth. All of the questions should be written in the simple present and the present continuous. Students ask the teacher to pause the video every time they think they can make a sentence using both present tenses that compares the action on the screen with their own habits, e.g. Students roleplay taking people around their workplace, describing what they can see happening and how things happen there more generally. Old time favourite hangman games are here to add to the fun. The first person to fifteen points wins. If you are the type of person who prefers to have games on powerpoint or as printable handouts, we have been thinking of you. He usually sits inside. P.S. In this category, you will find games that practice: Grammar, Vocabulary, Reading, Spelling, Pronunciation and Listening skills.

Today he is eating caviar on a yacht. I therefore recommend moving fairly quickly on from any lessons on those tenses on their own to combining them in the ways explained below. After they finish the speaking activity, students can then discuss which of the tenses is most likely in each situation and/ or fill gaps in example sentences from the roleplays with the right tenses.

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. This can be made into more of a game by the same person phoning again and again and getting a different excuse each time.

(You can find some interesting and unusual pictures at here. To add speaking, you can get students to also shout out the full sentence as they touch the wall. Play then passes to the next person.

If possible, then use stills or a scene to show their real everyday lives and so check the students guesses. Includes the best of BusyTeacher: Try These 6 Simple Activities About Families. After ranking the questions, students ask each other questions of those different levels. 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. and give your students some prompts to complete sentences about their dream vacations. Present Simple examples could include People work too long hours for no good reason and Parents dont discipline their children enough. 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.