Stage Activities Student/Teacher

interaction &
timing
Lead-in Teacher pastes a two-fold artwork of a girl sleeping
whiles the house floods from an unclosed tap from
the kitchen. Mummy is annoyed and asking the S – S 5mins
girls what she was doing when the house flooded.
Learners relate to mates any sad event that
transpired to them sometimes past.

Presentation Teacher elicits to find out if the learners can guess

what the mother is asking the girl, and asks learners Ss - T
to come out with what they were doing when the
incident (related in the lead-in) occurred. Learners
give responses (e.g. playing, eating, swimming,
praying, etc.)

Teacher displays a PowerPoint of two sentences (a.

While I dressed, it started to rain. S-T
b. While I was dressing, it started to rain). Pairs
discuss for few minutes and teacher elicits and
gives feedback of the difference between the two
sentences. Teacher raises awareness of the meaning
of the second sentence as an ongoing action in the T-S
past that was interrupted (target language).

Teacher marks the target language (past

continuous-interrupted) with a timeline diagram T-S
and points out that the conjunctions and adverbs
“when, as, and while” are normally associated with
the past continuous/progressive.
Students come out with sentences of the target S-T
language and mark them on a timeline.

Teacher drills for pronunciation by saying part of

the sentence and asks learners to chorally repeat. T – Ss
This activity should be done three times over after
which the whole sentence will be said. Teacher
writes the form on the board. Ss – T

Students answer concept checking questions of the

target language. Teacher hands out five sentences
of past progressive sentences with three of them Ss - T
have the interrupted activity at the end. Q.1. Which
activity started first, the rain or me dressing?
Teacher asks about past simple and past continuous
Presentation Q.2. was dressing over when the rain started? Q.3.
(continued) Which words are normally associated with past
continuous sentences?
30minutes

Practice Students complete incomplete sentences written on

(controlled) the board e.g. The phone suddenly rang while I S–T
was………; While we were setting off, it ………...
this practice is done one after the other. Teacher
guides them as they complete the activity.

Students are paired. One performs an action or

gesture for some seconds then the mate shouts
“STOP” and ask “what were you doing” then the P/W
pair writes past progressive sentence and hands it to
the teacher (e.g. when you shouted, I was sleeping;
I was teaching whiles you shouted). This activity is 10minutes
done through the various pairs, and discussed after
the overall activities.

Production (freer) Teacher gives out an incident that occurred which

the kids are familiar with it. Students discuss by G/W
telling their mates what they were doing at that
time.

Students create a crime to investigate. They are

grouped into detectives and suspects. The
detectives ask suspects about what they were doing
at the time of the incident. The suspect students will
have to create a story of where they were. To G/W
increase fluency, a jury will have to be set up and
have the students to vote as to who is guilty and 15minutes
why they don’t believe the alibi.

Homework Students are asked to write six (6) sentences each Individual work
with three sentences starting with the interrupted
activity and the other three starting with the
interrupting activity.