Past Continuous Tense - Full Lesson Presentation + Activities & Answers!

A full lesson presentation (PowerPoint) teaching how to use the past continuous tense.

The past continuous tense is made from the past tense form of the verb ‘to be’ (was or were) + the progressive/ continuous form of the verb (a verb with the -ing suffix). It is used to describe background actions and long actions, usually that happened at the same time as something else.

This lesson presentation on the past continuous tense includes:

√ Learning objective

√ Three success criteria

√ Starter activity

√ Review of prior learning (examining the other tenses and why we use them)

√ Teaching input/ information slides (explaining how to identify and construct sentences in past continuous tense)

√ Multiple differentiated consolidation activities (fill in the blanks, spot the mistakes, change the sentences to past continuous tense etc.)

√ Independent activities and application tasks

√ Mini plenaries and extra practice tasks

√ Extension of learning challenges

√ Reading & writing tasks

√ Plenary activity

The lesson covers the following:

• Review of other tenses

• Structure of clauses in past continuous

• Difference between ‘was’ and ‘were’ (plural and singular subjects)

• How to describe the actions of the following types of subjects in the past continuous tense: regular and irregular plurals, countable and uncountable nouns, collective nouns, exceptions and pronouns

• Changing verbs into their progressive/ continuous form

• Purposes of using the past continuous tense

• Distinguishing between long and short actions

• Joining clauses in past continuous to clauses in past simple

• Using the past continuous tense in writing to describe background actions and set the scene

PLEASE NOTE - Please look at the ‘notes’ section of the PowerPoint for additional information about each slide. These include teaching tips, ideas and further explanations.

This lesson is also suitable for being delivered remotely through online learning with some slight adaptations. It could combine very well with platforms such as Pear Deck and Nearpod.