Page 93 - Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies 2009

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Part II: Putting Your Lesson Together
Figure 5-5:
Showing the past simple and perfect.
Not eat
THIS MORNING
hungry
You can use a similar method to show an action in the present perfect that started in the past but continues into the present.
From the timeline in Figure 5-4, you can elicit ‘I have lived/ have been living in London for a while’.
Figure 5-4:
The present perfect on a timeline.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX in London PAST PRESENT
Adapting the timeline
FUTURE
When you use a timeline you can use specific times, days, months or years instead of past, present and future. In addition to that, you don’t need to include both ends of the line if one isn’t relevant.
In Figure 5-5, the timeline shows two actions in the past so the students can see what happened first and what happened later. For example, ‘I was hungry this morning because I hadn’t eaten’, which illustrates the past simple and past perfect tenses respectively.
Using the board effectively
Whenever you use the board, the first thing you should check is whether you have markers that work – pens or chalk – and then make sure that all the stu- dents can see the board. You may need to alter the seating.
Keep your board clutter-free at all costs. Nothing frustrates a student more than looking down at his notebook for a second, then looking up again to see a board so disorganised and busy that he can’t find the thing he wanted to copy down. Rub off information you no longer need. Clean the board before and after each lesson.
PRESENT