[Deancuster]

This obviously is a bit late, but this is an activity that I use with the students.

First, I make up some cards that have either a present continuous sentence on them or a past simple sentence (For example, one card may say "You are talking on the telephone." Another card may say, "You knocked on the door.). For this activity, I have 12 cards that have past simple sentences and 36 with present continuous sentences (48 cards in total).

Then I divide the cards into two piles. One pile contains all 12 of the past simple sentences plus 12 present continuous sentences. The other pile contains the rest of the 24 present continuous cards.

Then I tell the students that they need to number their papers from 1-15 (or however many you want). I call two students to come forward (Student A and Student B). Student A selects a card from one pile and Student B from the other. The students need to act out their cards and the rest of the class need to write down the sentence.

For example, let's say Student A draws the card "You are cooking dinner" and Student B draws the card "You called on the telephone.", Student A would then start by acting out "cooking dinner". At some point, Student B will interrupt Student A by pretending to call him. Therefore, the students would write on their paper "When Student A was cooking dinner, Student B called him."

However, a different possibility is that Student A draws a card that says, "You are cooking dinner" and Student B draws a card that says "You are talking on the telephone". In this case, both students will start at the same time acting out their respective actions (as opposed to the previous scenario where Student A started and then Student B did his action). In this case, the students would write the sentence, "While student A was cooking dinner, Student B was talking on the telephone."

Obviously, Student A and Student B need to consult briefly beforehand so as to know who goes first or if they will be doing their action at the same time, but they should do so without revealing anything to the rest of the class.

Hope this helps for future lessons.