I have to redo my TESOL grammar lesson!

By far the hardest, this is agreed by everyone.

it's getting to crunch time on the course, I had to do my learner profile for Tuesday and then i tried to put the lesson together on 'reported speech' on the Wednesday for its allotted teaching time on Thursday.

I made a bad decision to use a warmer of asking 'what people usually do on the weekend'. this was then going to lead into 'what does the verb 'report' mean' and then using a collection of statements, in direct speech on the board, then transform them into 'reported speech' displaying the tense backshift

as you would know by now reading this, this meant that i took a statement such as "i go to the cinema" and then wrote 'she said (that) she goes to the cinema'

My tutor pick up on the lack of a backshift in tenses, and the unnatural use of this language. she piped up and started to correct the lesson as i 'went' along.

I then, more sucessfully, demonstrated the backshifting of tenses when using the present continuous using the example of ringing someone up over the weekend to find out what they were doing, they say "I'm watching a film" I then put it into 'reported speech' he said he was eating pizza. But then i got them to work in pairs for a communicative activity in which one student read out the direct speech and the other reported it. I used statements such as "I'm ice skating" which are hugely unnatrual when in the classroom.

Anyway i have to redo the lesson, can anyone think of a better way to engage the students at the strat of the lesson, I've tried but my tutor keeps saying that I'm assuming to much knowledge before teaching them??