Who, What, Where?

This is a listening assessment that I used after we spent some time using present progressive verbs, and I think that it works best when you have a targeted verb tense that you are comparing to something else. In this case, present vs. present progressive.

First, write up five to six mini-scenes (only one or two sentences each) that include a subject, an action, a location, and extra information. For example,

“My good friend Jim loves to eat fresh fish. He is fishing in Homer this weekend!”

“Is your grandpa angry? He is standing on the front porch and he looks upset!”

“There is a very fat dog that lives next door. Right now, he is eating the garbage in front of my house!”

Then, pull out the subjects, the actions (in this case, the ongoing actions expressed in the present progressive), and the locations and put them out-of order in three columns:

a fat dog                   is eating            front porch

my friend                 is standing       in front of my house

your grandpa          is fishing          in Homer

As you read each scene twice (maybe three times if it’s a low level class), students choose the correct subject, action, and location from their respective columns and write them down on their papers. I like giving the students their options versus asking them to pull out the material and translate it on their own, but that would be a higher-level assessment that would be appropriate to use for old material and/or at higher levels.

The assessment that I used for present progressive is contained in my present progressive notes, available on TpT.