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LESSON Max’s English Corner

This particular lesson plan is from an article
PLAN #2 showing how the PPP model works found in
The PPP Model Explained
USING THE PPP MODEL It is an example of how lesson planning can be
done, but without the accompanying materials.

1 OBJECTIVES
By the end of the class the students should be able to use the past continuous while engaging in a conversation about
what they did last weekend

2 CONTEXT

●Show some pictures of people doing fun or relaxing things and students describe them (learning the relevant
vocabulary such as the action verbs – reading a book, playing tennis, etc)

●Then the students ask the teacher questions to find out what s/he did last weekend or typically does on the
weekend. (It’s fine if the students don’t use the past continuous and they shouldn’t be expected to if they haven’t
been taught it yet. In fact, the past continuous isn’t part of the lesson plan until later in the Presentation stage).

3 INPUT TASK 1: READING FOR GIST Best title

●Write on the board 3 titles and tell the students they have to decide which
one (A, B or C) is the most suitable for the reading.
●Give the students the reading and 60 seconds to complete the task.
●Ask the students to say their choice(s) and say why. When all the choices have been gone over, tell them the
correct answer.

© [Link] 2020 PPP lesson planning example 2

4 INPUT TASK 2: READING FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION

●Give the students a handout with six sentences. All six sentences reflect what happened in the text they just read,
but each sentence has one mistake. Students are asked to look at the example of the first sentence and make similar
corrections for the remaining five.
NOTE: These mistakes reflect understanding the contents of the text, NOT any grammar errors.
Ex: Julie went to the market on Saturday. Friday
●Students complete task individually, compare answers with another student, then go over their answers as a class.
5 PRESENTATION 1 PAST CONTINUOUS: Form & Ongoing Action in Past

●Write on the board two sentences found in the first paragraph of the text.
Ex: There was a lot of traffic. Lots of people were going to the beach.

●Elicit the names of the two verb forms and write them above the examples.
●Elicit the structure of each. (regular verb in past simple form = verb + ED)
(past continuous verb has 2 parts: be auxiliary in past + verb in ING form)
●Elicit how to create the negative forms and write those sentences on the board
●Elicit how to create a WH question (and answer)
●Elicit how to create a YES/NO question (and positive & negative answer)
●Elicit when to use the past continuous. (Focus on Concepts 1 & 2 but accept others)
These concepts are explained in Part D of The PPP Model Explained and refer to particular situations that would be
appropriate for using the past continuous. You want the students to understand that they can use the past continuous
form when describing a general situation happening in the past (ex: It was raining yesterday), or when a particular
action lasted for a period of time and you want to bring attention to that (ex: It was raining all night).

●Before continuing on to the Practice tasks, ask different students comprehension check questions, testing them on
what they understand of what has been presented so far.

6 PRACTICE set 1
PRACTICE 1-1

●Give students worksheet. Explain exercise 1-1: There are 5 gap-fill sentences to complete, writing the past
continuous form with the provided prompts.
Ex: She __________ football yesterday. (not play) (She wasn’t playing football yesterday.)

●Students do it individually, check in pairs, then go over answers with class

PRACTICE 1-2

●Exercise 2 on worksheet. Students invent answers to respond to WH and Yes/No questions.

Ex: What were they doing? __________ (They were sleeping. – for example)
Was he studying? (+) __________ OR (-) __________
(Yes, he was. OR No, he wasn’t.)
●Model one or two examples first.

●As above, students do it individually, check in pairs, then the answers are gone over

PRACTICE 1-3 © [Link] 2020 PPP lesson planning example 2

Have the students ask you past continuous questions about your last weekend. Encourage both WH & Yes/No
questions. Allow other questions too, like past simple and present simple, and if they make mistakes, guide them by
eliciting the right form of question to ask or the key elements which would help them decide which form to use.

7 PRESENTATION 2 PAST CONTINUOUS: Action happening at a specific time in the past

●Write on the board the following question and answer:

What were you doing at ten o’clock last night? I was watching TV.

●Elicit if the action was for a duration (ex: for 3 hours) (No), a description in general (ex: the sun was shining)
(No) or for an action happening (in progress) at a specific time in the past (Yes!)
●Point out that this is a different function (situation to use the verb tense). Ask students if there are any changes to
the form in the question or answer. (No)

●Draw a time line (see Concept #5) As in Presentation 1, the past continuous can be used in different situations. In
this case it is for a continuous action happening at a certain point in time in the past.

●Elicit or provide more WH questions:

- - What were you watching on TV (at that time)?
- - Who were you watching TV with (at that time)?
- - What were you doing at 11:00 last night?

●And elicit some Yes/No questions:

- - Were you watching TV at 10:30? (Yes, I was. // No, I wasn’t.)
- - Were you eating at 6:15?

8 PRACTICE set 2
PRACTICE 2-1

●Students write questions to ask partner about last night (with specific times).
If students seem to be able to handle it, ask them to write two WH questions and two Yes/No questions. If not, do 3
WH questions only.

●Teacher monitors and helps/guides when necessary.

PRACTICE 2-2

●Students are placed into pairs. One student is to ask a WH question, and the other answers it. Model first with two
students so they are clear on the task instructions. Then students carry out the task and the teacher monitors.
●In the same pairs, students change roles.

PRACTICE 2-3

●If only WH questions were done previously, then repeat tasks 2-1 and 2-2 but for Yes/No questions this time.

9 PRESENTATION 3 Focus on enriching the students’ approach to speaking

© [Link] 2020 PPP lesson planning example 2

●Teacher goes into ‘hot seat’ role where students have to ask WH and Yes/No questions about what s/he was doing
yesterday.
●Teacher points out that simply asking a list of unrelated questions soon exhausts the activity. The students can
enrich their speaking by
1) asking follow-up questions – not all of which have to be in the past continuous form (ex: Do you do that every
night?)
2) making comments – (ex: That’s interesting. Me too. I was doing that too.)
3) volunteering information about themselves – I don’t like to watch TV. I prefer to do other things in my free
time…..)
●Teacher chooses one student to be in the hot seat and the class asks that person about her/his day yesterday. The
teacher encourages follow-up questions, comments from the class, as well as volunteering information about
themselves.
10 PRACTICE set 3
PRACTICE 3-1

●Students are divided into groups of 3 or 4, one person in each group is in the hot seat, and they ask and speak about
yesterday. (Some questions and sentences are in the past continuous, but many aren’t.) Teacher monitors.
●After a few minutes the teacher tells the students to select a new person for the hot seat. Teacher monitors.

After a few more minutes teacher stops activity and addresses class, offering a little feedback (such as
encouragement, advice and eliciting corrections to some mistakes).

PRACTICE 3-2 Dress Rehearsal for Production Speaking Activity

●Students stay in the same groups. Rather than focusing on just one person who is in a hot seat role, tell them to
imagine they are having a coffee together and a short conversation about what they did yesterday. Encourage the
people to all participate, volunteer information, make comments and ask questions, including follow-up questions.

●Teacher monitors and prompts them as the students attempt to have a conversation for five minutes.

●At the end of the activity, teacher gives some feedback such as tips, recognition of what they were doing well,
some corrections on mistakes made when using the past simple or continuous, and more encouragement for
everyone to participate in the conversation.

11 PRODUCTION
●The teacher changes the groups so there are new members in each group.

●The students are told to do the same thing as before, only now the theme of their conversation is to talk about last
weekend. They can find out how their weekends were similar or different, and if the weekend was unusual or like
every other weekend.

●This time the teacher does not intervene and s/he tells them so. They will have up to 5 minutes to speak about the
theme and the teacher will not be participating or helping in any way. It is up to them to maintain the conversation.

●The students engage in their conversations the best they can.

12 FEEDBACK
© [Link] 2020 PPP lesson planning example 2
●As with the dress rehearsal, the teacher gives feedback in the form of corrections, tips and reminders, and pointing
out what the students did well.

HOMEWORK
●The students have to write 150 words about what they did last weekend, including at least one example of the past
continuous for Concept 1* and at least one example of Concept 5*.

*NOTE: ‘Concept 1’ and ‘Concept 5’ are not the official names or numbers of these referenced situations. They
were only used for the purposes of this article and can be seen as they were presented in The PPP Model Explained,
Section D. They could very easily be called Situation 1 and Situation 2 or any other title that the teacher may prefer
to use.