Past Continuous Activities Needed For M2 In Gov School. Help!

[Gerry290]

Past Continuous Activities needed for teaching M2 in Gov School. Help!

Hi Everyone,

I am hoping some of you experienced teachers can give me some urgent help with ideas or activities for me because tomorrow I got to teach 6 periods to M2 on "Past Continuous" tomorrow in a government school.

To set the scene, I got 6 classes back to back tomorrow of approx 40 - 50 teens in each group. As most of you know it is in a government school meaning the only teaching aid/resource is the White Board and unfortunately there are no facilities on site nor costs covered to do approx 300+ exercise hand outs.

I find with the M2 level a handful of kids got good English right through to those with minimal English and there is a high percent of kids who have no desire to listen to "Farang" preferring to chatter with this classroom friends.

My point is due to these factors the games & activities I find online on ESL websites for "Past Continuous" would crash and burn into bedlam with the rowdy bunch I got. LOL!

A few "fill in the blanks" sentences on the Whiteboard work great for a 10 minutes filler and aside from my already prepared "fill in the blanks" on the whiteboard exercise...I am terribly stuck for ideas...

If anyone got any suitable suggestions (considering the environment of gov schools) that might work for me, I would be very grateful and very thankful.

Kindest Regards

Gerry

[KhaoDam]

One idea...put them into group of three, give each group a different scenario, ie: " I was playing football when I broke my leg." or "While I was cooking dinner the phone rang." Each group mimes/acts their scenario in front of the class and the other groups try to guess the sentence...the correct group gets one point...next!

Once you create the scenarios, you just sit back and watch...for 6 periods. Good luck.

[Scott]

Let us know how your class went and what seemed to work. Plenty of teachers in your shoes!

[Gerry290]

Good Thanks, I will try that little game KhaoDam suggests in the latter 30 mins of the 60 min period.

In thinking of what to do one way around the topic of "Past Continuous" (or any topic) is to "back" the grammar topic into a more exciting topic. e.g. use a more exciting topic such as "Shopping" in the context of "Past Continuous" and that allows me to teach several new & useful Vocab words and then angle any White Board Fill The Blanks to the

"Past Continuous".

I am lucky in that I got 6 periods of the one topic so I find that by period 3 usually I have the pitfall figured out and can amend the lesson plan to what works better.

Really I would like do up about 300 double side hand outs but since the government schools I am in do not provide copy or print facilities and obviously expenses are not covered re the pay levels, it rules out me doing 300+ hand outs myself which is a pity as I could do a dam_n great class with this simple but effective teaching method. :-(

Getting the students to try with role plays or games is another challenge of a very different nature - i.e. getting participation is like pulling teeth!

I just found this very simple basic lesson plan for Past Continuous i.e. the role plays are very simple to do e.g. student acts out "She was feeling bored"

See the link this is good stuff

http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/worksheets/grammar/past-tenses/feelings-past-cont/

I like to have a variety of back up plans with me so I can switch fast mid class if anything on my main lesson plan crashes and burns.

Edited July 8, 2010 by Gerry290