Present Continuous
I’m an English teacher, teaching the present continuous for future use in the classroom. The expected number of students that will be attending the class is thirty. The class level is for English for beginners. When teaching, I will borrow a leaf from the method applied in the book ‘How to teach English’ (Harmer, 2007); I will be using the ESA (Engage, Study and Activate) approach that I learned while taking an EFL on-line course with IIIT.
When teaching my students, I will use several teaching aids namely the board, a video or DVD, Overhead Transparencies (OHP), visuals, worksheets, a cassette recorder, a video camera, a computer, a dictionary, a course book, a resource book and a photocopier.
Steps in teaching the present continuous tense for future use
There are various steps that one has to take to teach the present continuous. Before starting to teach the students the present continuous, first I ascertain that my students know the present simple. The first step is introducing the present continuous tense using an action with “will” happening in the future. I do this using a word denoting the future; for example, next week, tomorrow and next year. Examples include, “After I finish teaching, I will go home in the evening.” Using the board, I emphasize that the present continuous tense is used to describe the future when we have made a plan of something before talking and comprises of “will be and present participle.” I give the students ample examples both asserting, negating and questioning. Examples include, “You will be waiting for my message from the prefect in the evening”, “Will you be waiting for my message from the prefect in the evening” and “You will not be waiting for a message from the prefect in the evening.” Then I ask them to give their examples.
The second step is introducing the present continuous form with “be going to.” I do this using a word stating what they “will be going to” do when a specific event occurs. I use thev board to emphasize that the future use of present continuous uses the combination of am/is/are, going to be and the present participle. I give them several asserting, negating and questioning examples; examples such as “You are going to be waiting for the message from the prefect when evening comes”, “You are not going to be waiting for the message from the prefect when evening comes” and “Are you going to be waiting for a message from the prefect when evening comes?”
The third step is explaining the use context under which the present continuous for future use is used. The first of these is an interruption of an event in the future such as “I will be waiting for the prefect when evening comes.” The next is describing an interruption of a particular time in the future and provision of examples such as “Today in the evening, I am going to be watching the CNN news.” The other use is describing a parallel event in the future whereby it shows that two events will happen simultaneously, for example, “I am going to be looking for the prefect and he is going to be looking for me.” The last use is to describe the atmosphere at a particular time in the future, for example, “When I ask the following question, some students with the answer are going to be raising their hands, others are going to be standing and others are going to be writing on their books.”
Anticipated problems for teachers include lack of examples to give the students. A solution would be using a computer to access on-line materials and examples. Anticipated problems for students include the students confusing between affirmative and dissenting forms of present continuous or meanings of other words such as verbs. A solution would be teaching them how to use dictionaries and the way [terms] in which the dictionary uses to describe them, Worksheets in solving student-related problems such as providing them with materials with gaps to fill.

Reference
Harmer, J. (2007). How to teach English. NY: Pearson Longman.