GRADE 10 FRIENDS GLOBAL Grammar Past continuous I. Introducting grammar:
Exercise 1: Read the opening paragraph of a story
Why does the narrator notice the tall man?
-Aim: the students will be able to make predictions on why the tall man
standing near the exit with his summer clothes was focusing on the narrator.
-Activity: guessing the tall man’s action, making statements about actions in progess at the same time -Language: past continuous -Level: beginner/elementary -
Hold up a number of picture (or flashcard) 1 2 3 4 -
Show the students the picture of the crowded platform. Ask them what
people were doing, but do not confirm or deny their suggestions. -
Explain that they are going to find out what people were doing on the
crowded platform. Say the following sentences; the students have to choose
which flashcard or picture is being talked about:
A mother and her two young children were sitting on a bench
The girl was playing with a toy
Travellers were waving goodbye
Travellers were carring heavy bags
Crowded platform at 7:30pm -
When the students have guessed ( confirmed their guesses) that a mother and
her two young children were standing, hold up the cards individually and try
to elicit the sentences about each one. Model the sentences and, if
appropriate get choral and individual repetition before moving on to the
accurate reproduction stage. Conduct a cue-response drill by holding up, say,
card 1 so that the students have to say They were sitting on a bench. -
Once the students are reasonably confident with these sentences, they can
think of a real person (or invent their own) with a different situations. Ask
them to come up with three affirmative and three negative sentences about
activities people were doing at that time. While they are doing this, go
around monitoring their work (offering help or correcting where necessary) -
The students now read out their sentences and the rest of the class have to
guess which activity is being describe. II. Discovering grammar: -
Ask the students to fill in the correct form (past continuous) of words in the blanks for each sentence. -
The students (perhaps in pairs) then do the following activity:
Exercise 3: Complete the paragraph below with the past continuous form of the verbs in brackets.
I left the hotel early the next morning. Already, the sun 1 (shine) brightly
and the temperature 2 (rise). In the square, café owners 3 (carry)
tables outside. A dog 4 (lie) on the pavement nearby, but it 5
(not sleep). Two teenage girls 6 (sit) on a bench 7 (share)
headphones. What 8 (they / listen) to? -
The students check their answers after the activity
Exercise 4: Work in pair. Ask and answer questions about the characters in the texts in exercises 1 and 3 What were they doing? 1. The mother 5. The tall man 2. The boy 6. The café 3. The girl 7. The dog 4. The other travellers 8. The teenage girl -
Ask the students to read the paragraph of the first exercise and describe the
actions of each person and object in the continuous form. III. Practising grammar: