[little sage]

I can't remember which book I learned this from, but it was a great success in my class of 11-12 year olds.

Purpose: to review the past continuous ie. "They were playing basketball".

Preparation: Either have cards with action words ready, or use your text book to point to the actions they have studied in their book.

Method:
1) Divide the class into two teams.
2) Create a space where one team can sit in chairs together and the other team can stand up without tables in the way.
3) Have one team sit down and close their eyes, or face the wall.
4) Monitor that eye closed/no peeking rule, perhaps deduct points for peeking.
5) Show the other team an action verb like "playing basketball".
6) That team silently acts out the action until you say FREEZE.
7) When you say FREEZE every member of the team freezes their current action and holds it.
8) Team one can now open their eyes and see the frozen actors.
9) Each student from the seated team takes a guess at to what Team 2 was doing. "Was she playing tennis?" HINT: Guessing should be fairly swift, poor team one is patiently frozen, remember.
10) A successful guess gives them one point.
11) After all students guess once, point or no point, play proceeds to the next team.
12) Game ends at teacher's discretion.

TIPS: To get the game going at a good pace, use simple sentences like "She was eating". Once the kids are into it, increase the level of difficulty by adding objects (not physical objects, silly) to the sentences. ex. "She was eating spaghetti".