Activity to Practice There is/are

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Teaching there is / there are to young children.

In English to say that something "exists" or is in a certain location we use the phrase there is or there are according to whether we are talking about one or more items. To help young students learn and use these correctly you can try this activity.

1 Preparation
2 Pre-Task
3 The Game
4 Adaptation

Preparation

Collect various small items: a colour pen, a hat, a soft toy, a ball, etc. – items relevant to your students’ age are preferable.

Place them in a bag or a suitable container (preferably not transparent).

Clear your desk!

Pre-Task

Go around the class asking each student to take one item out of your bag. When they do, encourage them to say what that item is: hat, pencil, ball, and so on.

Ask each student to place the item on your desk. When they do, say:

Look, there is a ball.

Look, there is a pen.

Look there is a bag.

Once all the items have been picked out of your bag, go through them by saying:

Look at my desk! There is a pen; there is a teddy bear; there is an apple; etc.

Have the students repeat after you, and possibly say it instead of you. Do this with every item and make sure you have more items than students.

The Game

Once you feel confident your students know the vocabulary go to the back of the classroom and have all the children stand up and turn to face you.

Instruct your students to raise their hand when the wnat to give an answer and then sit down after answering. This way you can easily monitor who is active in the game and ensure that all children take part.

Then start asking:

What's there on my desk?

Elicit a simple answer for each object, like:

There is a card.

There is a book.

The guessing element of this activity gets the children more involved and allows them to produce correct sentences almost without realising they are doing so. So, for best effect do not tell the students they are supposed to remember what is on the desk!

Adaptation

For older or more proficient students you can increase the difficulty of this game by:

placing the objects around the class and eliciting answers that use prepositions of place like:

There is a teddy bear next to Jeremy’s chair.

There is a book under the desk.

introducing items in the plural (some tissues, three pencils, many English books, etc.). This will encourage students to choose between there is and there are.