The present continuous tense (also known as the present progressive tense) is used to talk about actions that are happening now or are unfinished.
Examples include eating, singing, reading, running, dancing, etc. This page is an ESL lesson plan to teach the present continuous tense to beginner students.
The games and activities in this lesson plan are mainly aimed at young ESL students. These activities can, however, be adapted to teach older beginner learners.
Download all the materials you need for this lesson in the box below. Check out the bottom of the page for additional games and activities to teach the present continuous (progressive) tense to beginners.
To warm up and introduce the present continuous tense to students, start off by listening to a fun song. This song by the Silly Billy Band is perfect for this lesson and kids find it very funny.
Play the song and ask students to listen for all the words ending with ‘ing‘. After the song, ask students what present continuous words they can remember and write them on the board.
Next, put these words in context. The present continuous tense describes actions that are taking place at the time of speaking. So, the best and easiest way to demonstrate this to students is to act out the present continuous verb as you are saying it. For example, pick up a book and pretend to read it and say ‘ I am reading.’
Do the same with the other present continuous verbs from the song. As you are saying and acting out the sentences, ask the students to do the same.
Your students will soon gain a basic understanding of the function of present continuous verbs. To introduce the basic structure of the key sentences, play the song one more time. Pause the song after each action and ask students what he/she is doing.
Using these present continuous flashcards, practice the keywords by showing the flashcards and asking students to repeat after you. Then, ask students to try to say the words on their own. Then ask students to look closer at the flashcards and ask them if they see a boy or a girl.
Explain to students that use ‘he’ to refer to boys and ‘she’ to refer to girls. Practice asking and answering ‘What is he/she doing?’ using the flashcards. Once students have practiced the key expressions enough, it’s time for a fun game to practice some more.
This Pass the Ball Game, and many other ESL classroom games can be found on our YouTube Channel.
This board game is best played in pairs and is designed to get your students to make a dialogue using present continuous verbs with their partners.
In this game, students will ‘race around the world’. One student will go clockwise, and one student will go anti-clockwise. To play, students should put their erasers where it says ‘start’ and then play rock, scissors, paper.
The winner can move their eraser on square. Then the students should have a dialogue based on the the picture in that square. For example, one student will ask, ‘What is he doing?’ and the other student will look at the picture and answer, ‘He is eating.’.
Alternatively, to make this game more fun, one student can ask ‘What are you doing?’ and the other student must answer and act out the sentence (for example, ‘I am dancing.’). The first student to make it all the way around the world is the winner. For many more printable board games on many topics, click here.
