PRESENT PROGRESSIVE

LESSON PLAN

This lesson plan is designed to be developed in the Antonia Santos School from Medellín. It is
intended for fifth graders. Their English level is very low, however they enjoy the English class
and they are motivated to learn English. They are 38 girls, some of them are very shy and not
very participative in the classes, but in the different activities that are planned, the teacher tries
that they can participate according to their learning styles and strengths. In order students feel
comfortable in the development of the class, and don’t get anxious, every activity is going to be
adapted to their level. Krashen (1988) says: “The best methods are therefore those that supply
'comprehensible input' in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want
to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students
to produce when they are 'ready', recognizing that improvement comes from supplying
communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production.”

According to the school curriculum, in this third term, one of the main topics we have to work
on is present progressive. So, this lesson plan is aimed to start to work on that topic (affirmative
structure).

Students have already been exposed to and are familiar with some present tense verbs and have
background vocabulary knowledge of common verbs. Students do not have a high level so some
instructions are done in English but most of the times are in Spanish and students can interact
in Spanish to give their opinions, but then when they know the new structure, the written and
spoken examples will be in English. In this sense, Krashen (1988) underlines: “Acquisition
requires meaningful interactions in the target language - natural communication - in which
speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are
conveying and understanding.”

The language and content objectives are very specific, at the end of the second hour of class,
students will be able to identify and use the affirmative present progressive structure. With the
purpose of all students can understand the structure, several materials will be used, each of
them with a purpose and tied to the objectives and the four skills. The idea of the carrousel is
that the teacher can monitor each group, reinforce and correct misunderstandings; and students
can learn in a cooperative way. During the class, students will be manipulating something (cards,
sheets or worksheets) and visual materials will help them with the new vocabulary (key
vocabulary) having into consideration that discussing and “doing” make abstract concepts
concrete (Peregoy & Boyle, 2005)

The assessment of the class will be during the whole class.

SIOP
 Lesson Plan

Date: 04-10-2016 Unit/Theme: Present progressive

Standards: Use properly structures and
Grade/Class/Subject: English/ fifth grade grammatical patterns of frequent use.

Content Objective: Students will be able to identify the affirmative present progressive
structure to describe what they are doing at a specific moment in time.

Language Objective: Students will use the present progressive tense to make oral and written
statements describing what people are doing.

Key Vocabulary: Supplementary materials:

Buy
Clean Flash cards
Cry CD player
Dance Magazines
Do exercise Worksheet
Drink Papers
Eat Pictures for students to write about
Jump Glue
Laugh Scissors
Listen
Open
Paint
Pay
Play
Pray
Read
Sing
Sleep
Study
Swim
Throw
Wait
Walk
Watch
Work
I am
She/he/it is
We/they/you are
What are they/you doing?
What is he/she/it doing?
Building Background:

Students will review some verbs in infinitive acting them out.

Note: the key vocabulary will be posted previously on the left part of the board.

Presentation:

Through a short explanation, the teacher will introduce the present progressive structure, and will
ask students compare the verbs in infinitive with those posted on the left part of the board. Then,
after some examples done for the teacher; the students will begin to write their own on your
notebooks.

It is necessary to check if students are doing good use of the “to be” structure and if they understand
how to use them with the structure learnt, so the teacher will be constantly monitoring student´s
examples and give feedback when is needed.

After, a song will be played, students will complete the song with the structure learnt, then they will
sing and act it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja0xp2j_JhM

Practice/Application:

To practice, the activity of application will be developed in a carrousel: there will be different bases
(each one will have a length of 15 minutes). Students will go for each one, and the teacher will have
the opportunity of monitoring and correct misunderstandings.
 Ladders and snakes
 Read and draw
 Students will solve a worksheet about the topic asking and describing the different action
people are doing in a moment.
 Memory game

Review/Assessment:

In groups of four and using magazines, glue, scissors and sheets of paper, students will make a mini
book about actions people are doing.

Homework

Students prepare a short dialogue where they use at least three sentences in present progressive.

Extension:

Worksheet with fill in the gaps activity

 ANNEXES
Title: What are you doing? ---

What are you doing?

I'm washing, washing.
What are you doing?
I'm eating, eating.
What are you doing?
I'm daincing, dancing.
I'm dancing. I'm dancing now.

What is he doing?
He's running, running.
What is he doing?
He's drawing, drawing.
What is she doing?
She's sleeping, sleeping.
She's sleeping. She's sleeping now.
Shh! Shh!

Song
What are you doing?

What are you doing?

I'm washing, washing.
What are you doing?
I'm ____________, ____________.
What are you doing?
I'm ____________, ____________.
I'm ____________. ____________.
What is he doing?
He's running, running.
What is he doing?
He's drawing, drawing.
What is she doing?
She's ____________, ____________.
She's ____________. She's ____________ now.
Shh!
opening closing
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Krashen, S. (1988). Second language acquisition and second language learning. Retrieved from:
www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/krashen_sla.pdf

Echevarria J., Vogt J., Short D. (2000) Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners.
Retrieved from:
http://condor.cng.edu/tti/BIlingual_Education/Chapter%207%20Practice%20Application.pdf