My JTE requested an activity to practice present continuous with the 1年生 and I'm a huge fan of relay/information gap activities, so I whipped this up! This activity likely won't last an entire class period, so I recommend supplementing with a warm up game or other practice with the target grammar. This activity targets speaking, listening, and writing.
PREP
- Print out the picture sheet and sentences sheet, one per group
- Print a copy of the answer key for you and the JTE
HOW TO PLAY
Divide students into groups of 4-5, have them determine their own relay order
Pass out the picture sheet and sentences sheet. The picture sheet has 3 boxes with people doing activities. The sentences sheet has corresponding sentences about the people in the pictures. The students' objective is to label the picture correctly and write sentences using present continuous.
One by one in their teams, students will come to the teachers and ask "What is [name] doing?". You will answer from the answer key. (Ex: What is Sakura doing? / Sakura is eating onigiri.)
The student returns to their group where they work together to write the sentence on their sheet and label the person in the picture.
The next student may now come to the teachers and ask about the next person. Repeat until all the people are labeled and sentences are written.
When students finish picture 1, they can check their work with the teachers and move on to picture 2. The sentences get slightly more difficult each round. If there are labeling or spelling mistakes they must correct those before continuing.
Fastest group gets a sticker, groups who finish early can copy the sentences into their notebooks.
NOTES
- I've kept the names the same across the pictures so the students can pronounce them easier. However, once you have students on picture 2 and 3, you will need to ask "Which picture?" when students ask "What is [name] doing?"
- Optional: to prevent one student from doing all the writing you can specify that the question asker becomes the writer on the next sentence.
Thanks for this! I used it for the last half of class and it was a great practice! One thing to note, for some reason the letters on the writing sheet only go up to C then back to B and A. On the answer sheet it goes from A-F. Just had to do a quick fix in class for the student's sheets but otherwise it worked out fine!
@gbonda1 ah thank you!! I'll upload a corrected version!
I want to say this was marvelous and worked even with very low level students! Thank you.