Top 10 Present Continuous ESL Activities

Are you looking for engaging, present continuous ESL activities that will keep your students actively learning? With the right resources, lesson plans, and teaching strategies, every ESL classroom can be a lively learning environment. In this blog post, we discuss ten of the best present continuous activities that educators from across the globe use to make their classrooms hopping with energy. Read on to learn more about these creative activities and see how they could help add dynamic education to your regular lesson plans!

Ten the Best Present Continuous ESL Activities for your Class

Interactive online worksheets are a great way to engage students during online education. Here are the top 10 activities that can be used in the classroom to get students to use the present continuous and learn it quicker.

1. Role Play - is an excellent way to help students use the present continuous in a more natural context while engaging them in an interactive activity. In this exercise, each student takes on a role and must create a conversation using the present continuous with their peers. This allows them to practice learned material and apply the tense correctly in different scenarios and with others. Students can be put into pairs or small groups and given a situation where they must use the present continuous. For example, they could be at an airport and need to ask for directions or buy a ticket. Create such an activity, using audio or video responses, deepening students' understanding of the material and allowing them to practice speaking skills.
2. Picture Description is another great way for students to utilize the present continuous when learning the language online. All that is required is for students to look at an image and describe what they see using present continuous verbs and other grammar forms. Fill-in-the-blank or open-ended elements provide a fun challenge and give students an opportunity to build up their vocabulary around the tense and practice their speaking or writing skills within one activity.
3. Verb Tense Scavenger Hunt encourages students to explore both written and spoken language related to the present continuous through exploration, discovery, and problem-solving. This entertaining activity gets students up and moving around even if they are not in the classroom. Students can do it at home by simply looking around their personal space. Add open-ended question types and audio or video responses to your interactive lesson. Students will need to find examples of the present continuous from around the room and then write them down in the proper areas.
4. Fill in the Blank Sentences is a way of testing your students' understanding of the present continuous by giving them sentences with missing words that they have to fill in correctly according to how it should sound grammatically correct when spoken aloud in English, making sure that all elements such as subject agreement adhere too. This exercise provides direct feedback on whether each sentence has been completed correctly, making it easier to identify areas where your student may need more help understanding certain aspects of this particular verb tense when speaking English. We've covered the topic of meaningful feedback in our cozy blog for teachers; go on to read further.                 
5. Grammar Scavenger Hunt. This activity is similar to the verb tense scavenger hunt but focuses on finding examples of the present continuous in books or other materials around the room. You can assign students a worksheet with a text in which they must find the present continuous and write the phrases in the boxes provided. Use various methods to engage students in work: games, pictures, videos, and supplementary materials. Top tip! Relate the text to the topic you are currently studying; for example, if you are exploring marine life, you can find or create a text about fish or plants that can be found in the ocean. 
6. Word Association is designed around helping your students increase their knowledge of spelling patterns associated with certain verbs. This activity can be used as a warmer or cooler (read about more types of icebreakers). Students will need to brainstorm words associated with various activities happening in the present continuous. For example, if they hear "I am watching TV," they might say "lazy" or "relaxing." This task encourages them to further enrich their knowledge around key terms used within the speaking context. Teachers from their part can provide support when forming large sentences/paragraphs involving multiple connected words.e, "I am walking quickly down the street." Using such activity during an online meeting can be through the worksheet with open-ended question type or any other element that include creativity.
7. The jumbled Sentences task gives you another option for testing your student's comprehension of how different elements relate together within the sentence structure. In this activity, students will need to unscramble sentences that are jumbled up. This is a great way to practice decoding and grammar skills. Top tip! Use the Drag&Drop element for such an activity; its mechanics allows you to create separate parts that student can move to reorder sentence.  
8. Quizzes. These activities involve students answering multiple-choice questions related to the topic, allowing them to test their knowledge and distinguish between correct and incorrect answers. Quizzes can also be used as a form of assessment, as they allow teachers to measure student understanding of the material and offer feedback on how well they are doing. Additionally, quizzes provide an opportunity for peer learning, as students can discuss their answers with one another and explain why they think certain responses are correct or incorrect.
9. Storytelling – Students can be given pictures depicting events in sequence and then asked to tell a story using the present continuous tense. This is a great activity for practicing storytelling and grammatical skills. Top tip! Create a worksheet from scratch with that task in Edform builder. Use Text, Image, and Open-ended elements.                
10. Matching activities are a splendid way to get students to practice the present continuous and ensure they retain what they have learned. With these activities, students can match multiple words, phrases, or sentences with each other, helping them recall and apply the grammar rules in their own speech. For example, in a present continuous matching activity for beginners, one side of the matching activity could contain simple sentences like "She is eating breakfast" and "He is watching TV." In contrast, the other side has corresponding images, like a person sitting at a table with food or sitting on the couch watching television. 

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