What's happening?

Objective & content

By the end, A1+ pupils can describe a busy scene with the present continuous (A boy is ..., Two girls are ...) and there is / there are. The bank is 13 projectable slides: a how-to slide, then 12 drawn everyday scenes, such as a school canteen, a station, a supermarket or a snowy park, each with a list of four things to find.

Pedagogical guide

Use it as a five-minute warm-up once the present continuous has been introduced. A busy picture gives every pupil something to say, from one action to a full sentence, and the find list adds a quick vocabulary task that keeps the whole class looking. The scenes are interchangeable: show one per lesson, or come back to the same one with a memory game.

Suggested procedure

1. (1 min) Show the how-to slide, then one scene. Pupils look for one minute.
2. (2 min) Pupils say what the people are doing: A boy is eating a sandwich.
3. (2 min) They find the four things in the list and say where they are: There's a clock.

Adaptations

• [S] True or false: say a sentence about the picture. Is it true?
• [A] Memory: hide the picture and ask What is the girl in the red coat doing? Or pupils write five sentences about the picture.

Materials & prerequisites

A projector or screen; the bank is a 16:9 PDF, one slide per page, with no printing needed. Assumes the present continuous, there is / there are, and everyday words for food, school and town.

Curriculum alignment

Maps to Cycle 3 "child and close environment" (FR): describing people and places of everyday life.