Using I-Pads to practice the Present Continuous with Flex 8 students

A poster made by a student

In an effort to overcome my resistance to – or fear of – using technology in class, I gathered all my courage and, in the second week of our classes, I  decided to take the risk of using IPads with my Thomas Flex 8 group of adult students.

I chose PicCollage, an app I am quite familiar with and not very difficult to deal with. My aim was to have students practice the Present Continuous, a tense which, although having its correspondence in Portuguese, causes a lot of problems to students. I started perspiring when the guy entered my class with the IPads; however, I tried to disguise my lack of confidence and asked the class what they knew about the chosen app. To my disappointment, no one had ever heard of it. I carefully demonstrated how to find and open PicCollage. 

To model the task I had in mind, I picked up a slip of paper where I had written an action – “read a book” – mimed it and asked a student to take my photo. Then I showed the class how to use the photo on PicCollage and how to add text, using a verb in the Present Continuous: “The teacher is reading a book”. When I was sure they were ready for the activity, I distributed slips with actions – “draw on the board”, “play basketball”, “dance” etc. - and had them work in pairs. One of them would mime the verb, and the other would take the picture, use it on PicCollage and add a sentence. To my surprise, some students were even able to insert stickers to their PicCollage posters. After they had finished the task, I wrote a short exchange on the board:

A: What’s your friend doing?

B: My friend  Bruno is playing basketball”.

Students were supposed to stand up and talk to three people, asking the question above.

My students had fun, were able to identify their problems – omission of verb to be or final –ing – and I was happy to have taken the risk and been successful! 

Do you see yourself trying something like this with your adult students? 

Beth Blom