a simple writing activity. ciao!

loven them here is what  I have

I tweeked the adding 'ing' worksheet to include present progressive sentence practice and added some videos because the original one didn't work for me.  I also took the ppt Sheila made and added a few more slides.  My students are a little behind grammatically.  Been playing catch up since I got to this school.  So I have to break things down to a very simple form.

I'm going to use the worksheet and ppt together

I am going to do a cloze activity for Lemon Tree where the students have to listen and fill in all the missing "ing" verbs. My students love the song and know most of the words already so it shouldn't be too hard for them.

Here's an intro PPT I made that tries to explain the grammar. 

The first thing we did was make a huge list of verbs.  They called out verbs and I wrote them on the board.  Then we played the Please Game (Simon Says).  Then I showed the PPT. 

Lastly, we played the 'Make a body' game.  I split the class into 3 teams. Each team has a head, neck, and torso drawn on the board.  One student from each team comes to the board.  Together they say, "What are you doing?"  I then proceed to do an action of some sort.  The first person to raise their hand gets to answer-- "You're dancing!"  If they're correct they get to roll the dice.  1=eye, 2=ear, 3=nose, 4=mouth, 5=arm, 6=leg.  The team with a complete body (no 3 eyes) wins. 
My students love this game.

Also icnelly's song "What are you doing?":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swRi4qHJsRE

2011 Update - I noticed the youtube link for the Lemon Tree video is not working. Here's a link to a different animated version of Lemon Tree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMwADXEK0pQ

One of the funniest things i ever did with the students at my last school was the "Harry Potter Game".  I made some wands for the Voldemorts and drew scars (face paint) on the Harrys.   I played along too, mainly to make sure they were speaking English. I swapped around who was Voldemort and who was Harry a few times.  If i heard the students not speak English or speak Korean they would have to sit out until the following round (unless they were really low level. 

I nicked the idea from the Genki English:


"The Harry Potter Game is based on Candlesticks or Stuck in the Mud.
When I did this game with my students, I taught them the question/answer set of "What are you doing?" "I'm dancing/jumping/cooking/playing soccer etc", but other teachers who have played the Harry Potter Game said it worked with animal or action vocab too.

(Perhaps in a previous class) teach the vocab (try the Warm Up Game) . Get them motivated, by saying we're gonna play the Harry Potter Game!


1. On the day, roll newspaper into wands and go outside.
2. Divide the class, give wands to 1/3 and they become Voldemort (sorry for mentioning his name).
3. The remaining wandless 2/3s are Harry Potter.
4. Give the Harry Potters a 10-second head start then let the Voldemorts loose.
5. When a Voldemort catches a Harry Potter, they wave their wand and shout an instruction at Harry eg jump/dance. Harry Potter then has to do that action in the same spot until they are saved.
5. The spell is broken when a FREE Harry Potter comes along and asks "What are you doing?" and the caught Harry Potter replies "I'm jumping/dancing". With that complete, Harry Potter is now free and the world is okay again!

We swapped over the Voldemorts and Harrys several times within a lesson and the kids do get quite tired, but they love it and request it often!

You can extend the target vocab by teaching them wand, wizard etc, plus I also taught the captured Harrys to call out 'Help me Harry' to draw attention to themselves.

But be warned if you play with kids you will become a target for the entire Voldemort population, and will find yourself either jumping or spinning for the entire lesson. But I guess at least you'll burn off lunch that day!" 


It was a lot of fun.  My school was small last year, and i had a class of 23 or , thus it was pretty easy to convince the teacher to let us use the school hall.  This year i have 5 classes of 32 so i might need to work a little harder on the convicing and have just have 16 students playing at one time. 

That HP game is such a cute idea! Thanks, to whoever thought it up first!

here's a mario bomb game i put together with some animated gifs for various activities.
(i used the same one i made for the g6 classes, i just changed the language)

Uses :What are you doing? --> I am (playing soccer).

Using Lemon Tree is a great idea!  Here is the fill in the dialogue worksheet I used for period 1 and an intro ppt from mediafire.

Thanks for the video!

Here is another song and activity. 
http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/over-the-mountains

I saw it used in an open class last year. :)

This is a short little video with the Simpsons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RYdMEDfRdU