I had been using these phrases long before I learnt that they were a grammar item. However, as I have to teach them to my students at school, I have created this short post. There is just a simple graphical presentation of the phrases and two games to practise them.

To practise phrase there is someone doing in a more realistic and communicative  way I recommend using some similar picture where students should find the differences. Nice pictures for spotting the difference can be found at Maryglasgowmagazines (you have to pay to be a member though).

This simple chart shows how the phrase There is/are … doing something should be formed.
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[showmyads] I think I have not used the Penalty template for some time, so here you can play the penalty shootout. Your task is to answer each question correctly and then score a goal. Good luck.

Penalty shootout game

The second game is called Teacher invaders. Your task is to shoot all the invaders and finish the sentences with the correct for of the verbs in the brackets. Be careful with your spelling.

Past simple or past continuous? – quiz You can find some more grammar games for elementary students at our site. For example there are games and mind maps to learn the past simple tense of irregular verbs. Or you could try the games on forming Adverbs correctly.