Teach Primary Issue 19.6

progressive tense. For example, if a pupil pulls out 6pm, they might say, “I was eating my dinner”. People watching There are various ways you can do this activity. You can either use our picture ( sheet 3 in the resource download); find your own picture/video; or find a busy location to use. Ask the children to explain what the people are doing in the picture/place, using the past progressive tense. They may say things like, “The old men were fishing”, or “The mother was pushing her pram”. As with Who Stole the Cookie? , draw attention to the past progressive children are using in the sentences. Let me finish! You can use our action and interruption cards ( sheet 4 ) for this one. First, one child acts out an action card and a second child ‘interrupts’ with their activity. The other children watch and write on their whiteboards what they think was happening e.g. ‘Sam was hoovering when Thea started crying.’ Discuss which part of the sentence is in the past progressive. Tall tales For this activity, you can organise pupils into pairs or groups. Children should take turns starting a sentence with, “Yesterday, I caught you...”. They should choose something silly to finish the sentence, e.g. “Yesterday I caught you... using your lunch plate as a frisbee”. The other children in the group then have to make up ‘tall tales’ to explain why they did that. For example, “I was throwing the lunch plate like a frisbee because I noticed it had a deeply poisonous plant on it and throwing it was the only way I could keep my classmates safe.” As with other activities, see if the children can identify the past progressive verb in the sentence. Homework challenge Ask the children to keep a timetable of their week (again this could link to time in mathematics). Once pupils have completed their timetables, ask them to bring them in and give the children a list of questions ( sheet 1 ). Ask pupils to write the answers in full sentences using the past progressive, using information from their timetables. For example, the question ‘What were you doing at 6pm yesterday?’ might have the answer, ‘At 6pm yesterday I was walking the dog with my mum’. Need some good old-fashioned practice? Finally, if you want to build on from the activities, get your children to have a go at sheet 5 . Give pupils sentences in either present tense or past tense, and challenge them to change the grammar to past progressive. After trying out these activities, your children should not only have a better understanding of what past progressive is and how to use it, they will also know how it differs from simple past tense. TP Laura Dobson is a deputy headteacher at a large primary school, and a former T&L consultant specialising in English and assessment. DOWNLOAD RESOURCES AT Download your FREE activity sheets at tinyurl.com/ tp-PastProgs www.teachwire.net | 95 T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG Verb Simple past Past progressive Past perfect Present progressive walk walked was walking had walked am walking fly flew was flying had flown am flying eat ate was eating had eaten am eating Use the grid below to refer to if you forget the different verb tenses. Filling in one of these grids is a nice starter activity for your class, too.