ESL Fun Children's Exercises on the Present Simple Tense
Learning English as a second language (ESL) can be challenging for children. Adding games and other fun activities to your lesson plan not only captures the attention and imagination of students, but the interaction and hands-on experiences generally allow for better retention of new information, and encourage students to study more thoroughly so they can excel at the game or activity.
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Charades
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Play charades by having one student perform an action while the other students try to guess what that action might be. Some examples are a student sitting in a chair and students guessing, "He sits," or a student miming eating, and students guessing, "He eats." This activity can be performed with the entire class or in small groups. Bringing a box of simple props into class and allowing the students to use them during their charades can add a bit of dramatic fun to the activity.
Sentence Building
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Write a verb on the board. Ask your students to come up with sentences that use that verb in the present tense. For example, you could write "swim" on the board, and students could come up with sentences such as "The fish swim in the sea" or "Jim swims every morning." This activity could be turned into a competitive game by challenging students to come up with especially creative sentences, by basing the sentences on a story or article read in class, or by having them focus on one theme.
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Postcards
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Pass out postcard-size pieces of paper to your students. Have them draw a picture of a place they would like to visit on one side of the paper. Ask your students to fill out the other side of the piece of paper as they would write a postcard if they were actually visiting that location. Students could write sentences such as "I eat breakfast every day in the hotel," "I see a whale in the sea every morning" or "I run on the beach at sunset."
Ask and Tell
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Have the class sit in a circle. Ask each student to write down a question that can be answered in the present simple tense, such as "What is the first thing you do each morning?" To begin the game, have a student flip a coin. If it lands heads up, the student has to answer his own question. If it lands tails up, the student to the left of the student who flipped the coin must answer the question. Continue around the circle until every student has had a chance to flip the coin and either answer his own question or have another student answer it.
Reverse Jeopardy
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Read a short story or article as a class. Draw a Jeopardy chart on the board. Have each student pick a question from the chart. Sample questions might include "What does Joe do at 7 in the morning?" and "What does Shirley like more than school?" The student answers the question using the present simple tense. For example, the answers to the sample questions could be "Joe eats breakfast at 7 in the morning" and "Shirley likes movies more than school." You might need more than one chart of questions, depending on the size of your class.
Funny Pictures
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Show your students a funny photograph or cartoon and ask them to describe what the person in the picture is doing. For example, show students a picture of person wearing a gorilla suit and dancing in the street. Students might answer, "He wears a gorilla suit and dances in the street," or "He acts like an ape and blocks traffic." Depending on the pictures, students might come up with some surprisingly creative descriptions.
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References
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