In this post, we will explore different games and activities that will allow you to motivate your students when teaching the simple present.
1. BINGO
Firstly, you need to write on the board a list of questions using simple present, for example
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Do you live in Peru?
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Do you like chocolate?
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Do you work in the mornings?
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Do you study in the afternoons? …
Remember you can brainstorm these questions with you to students so they can practice too.
The next step is to give each student a five by five grid like the one below :
After that, you should ask students to write a question in each of the blank spaces, make sure the square in the center is free.
Once all the students have written their questions they need to mingle around the classroom asking each other the questions they have written in their grid.
If someone answers “yes” to a question they should write the name of the friend in the corresponding Square.
Look at the example below :
The winner is the student who has written different names and has completed five squares in a row.
As you can see this activity will motivate your students to ask each other different questions using the simple present.
Click on the next button to get a copy of the grid in PDF
2. TALKING ABOUT DAILY ROUTINES
For this activity, first students need to write a schedule with the activities they do any day of the week, for this example, we will use Saturday.
Below you can see an example :
Saturday
8:00 -> wake up
9:10 -> have breakfast
10:00 -> watch TV …
After that, the students will walk around the classroom, and they will talk to their classmates about the activities they do during this day.
You can also encourage your learners to take notes about the different activities their friends do.
The next step is to randomly call four or five students to share the information they obtained while talking to their other classmates.
3. DOMINOES
Dominoes are a good way to encourage students to practice vocabulary related to the simple present. The objective of a dominoes game is that students can identify different pictures or sentences so they can add a card according to the picture or sentence that they are looking at.
For this activity, I will write about 2 variations for this game.
A) Groupwork
1) Group your students in groups of three or four.
2) Handle each group a full sell with the different pieces of the domino.
3) Tell them that this is a competition and that the group that finishes will be the winner.
4) It is also a good idea to tell them how much time they have to complete the activity, for this kind of activity I usually give my students around 10 to 15 minutes.
B) Whole class
For this second variation, the interaction will be between the teacher and the whole class so you don’t need to make a lot of copies of the Dominoes.
We play it in the following way:
1) Put all the pieces of the domino on a chair or a table.
2) Select one random student to begin.
3) After that, a second student will add a card according to the picture or sentence.
4) Next, you continue doing this until they complete all the sequences.
Click on the next button to get a copy of dominoes in PDF
