Lesson Plans by Time

> 1 class

• Mystery Unit

  Whodunit, a unit on mysteries comprising a reading, a bit of practice with modal verbs of speculation (as they seem to be called these days) and a writing assignment. Lots of discussion should be easy to add to this unit.

• IELTS Task 1: Example Essay Step by Step

  Step by step how to write the Task 1 essay for the IELTS Writing Section. Skills described include: writing a good introduction, conclusion, using transition words, summing up data.

15-30 mins

• Find Someone Who, Greet Them As If

  A new twist on “Find Someone Who”

• Describing Change

  Worksheet to teach verbs that describe changes in numbers, graphs and statistics as well as prepositions. Designed for the IELTS Writing section, Task 1.

• Ireland
• Future Tenses and New Year's Resolutions

  This is just an idea I had to use New Year’s resolutions to teach the future tense. That in and of itself is probably nothing new. However one major issue that many students have with talking about the future in English is distinguishing between when we use “going to do”, when we use “will do” and when we use present continuous, “I am doing”. So here’s a way to help them understand the difference.

• Trick or Treat Halloween Resources

  Two songs that introduce the idea of trick or treating and set the mood for Halloween. The Trick or Treat rap is a good activity aimed at beginners and includes a lyric sheet and some activities. The Halloween Trick or Treat Rap Video I found on YouTube isn’t much harder to understand though it is a bit adult in character.

• Desert Island Discs

  A simple party game that works as a warm-up, cool-down or to give students some easy practice expressing preferences.

• Comparatives and Superlatives

  A couple of activities to help students practice the comparative and superlative forms. This lesson doesn’t teach those forms; it’s just to give students a chance to use them.

• Fun Way to Teach Vocab

  I’m always looking for fun and interesting ways to teach new vocabulary and I came up with this idea based on Taboo or the $64,000 Pyramid. This game works best when you are sure that students probably won’t know any of the words perfectly, but will be able to infer the meanings of some of them.

• Speaking with Emotion

  A way to help students speak more fluently with emotion. Many times students are focusing so hard on meaning and making mistakes and when they speak that they end up sounding like robots.

• Learning Skimming and Scanning

  An exercise to provide a direct demonstration of what skimming and scanning are. Most importantly, this activity shows students that they already have these skills in their native language.

• Tom's Diner

  A listening exercise where students listen to the song Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega and fill in missing verbs in the Present Continuous. Then students discuss the song and why the Present Continuous tense is used instead of the traditional past simple so it’s great for reviewing verb tenses. You can find the song on iTunes or almost any music download site.

• Draw Label Caption
• Pre-Writing Techniques

  A lot of students don’t appreciate the importance of pre-writing or brainstorming or warming up to write. Often they want to sit down and start putting pen to paper immediately. However taking a few minutes to think and plan and get your brain working is an important part of writing a good essay. If you know what you are going to say, you can concentrate more on grammar and style while you write. So here are a couple of good exercises to give students in order to help their brain warm up before they get to writing.

• Transitions Are Your Friend

  A quick review of transition words and a chance to practice using transition words in a paragraph. Good practice for the TOEFL or IELTS essay.

• Sample TOEFL Essay: Favorite Sport

  A sample descriptive essay for the TOEFL independent question on the topic “My favorite sport”, with evaluation and tips for writing a better essay.

30-60 mins

• Writing Good TOEFL Paragraphs Quickly

  A great method from the Michigan Guide for writing good body paragraphs quickly and easily with 6 simple questions.

• Inversion With the Conditional
• Randy and the Nobel Prize

  Randy makes an important scientific discovery and writes to the Nobel Prize Committee. But he doesn’t get an answer!

• Don't Give Up

  A lesson plan that I adapted from somewhere, but I can’t remember where exactly. This is an idea that can be adapted to any lesson on a song that has a music video. Students watch the music video first, without sound, and try to figure out what the song is about. Then they listen to the song together with the music. Finally, they get a chance to look at the lyrics. Great fun as their opinion on the song changes each time.

• Where is It? Prepositions of Place

  My original giving directions lesson plan is focused more on practice in talking about where things are in a town or city and describing how to get there. This lesson is more about teaching and controlled practice. It focuses on basic prepositions of location such as “next to”, “in front of”, “behind”, “near”, “far from”, as well as “on”, “in”, and “at”

• Body Language

  This is an activity I came up with to teach American body language to students. It has a cross-cultural aspect to it as students talk about body language in their own cultures.

• Who Knew?

  A listening lesson plan on regular verbs in the Past Simple using Pink’s song, “Who Knew”. It also gets into some comprehension questions and a bit about love and relationships.

• Yes Virginia There is a Santa Claus

  A reading lesson plan on the famous editorial about the existence of Santa Claus, “Yes, Virgina, There is a Santa Claus”.

• Christmas

  A Christmas lesson plan that discusses the American Santa Claus and his counterparts in other parts of the world. Since I teach in the post-Soviet Union, where Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, brings presents on New Year’s Day and has some other differences, I thought a comparison of Kazakhstan’s holiday traditions and American traditions was a good introduction to Christmas. But of course, you could compare American Santa Claus and Sinterklass or other variations in your students’ cultures.

• This is Halloween

  “This is Halloween” is the opening song from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. It makes a great introduction to Halloween, especially setting the mood. Note that this song is not to be confused with the Marliyn Manson song of the same name!

• Culture Shock

  This is a discussion lesson that focuses on cultural differences in terms of polite and impolite actions. While the materials were designed with Kazakhstan in mind, they are easily adapted to any nation or culture.

• Culture Role Play

  This is an activity that that I adapted from the US Peace Corp’s clasroom guide, Building Bridges. Students role play two different cultures and interact with each other. Then the class can discuss how cultural differences can be misinterpreted. The activity was originally designed for students in the US and I changed it around a bit to make it more accessible to ESL learners of all levels and to make it more universally appropriate.

• Alibi

  A fun lesson plan where students must come up with group alibis and then get examined separately to see how well they remember their alibi and how detailed it was. This lesson works best with classes from 6 to 12 people. For larger classes, this lesson takes a really long time! While theoretically it can be adjusted to students of any level, the procedure is a bit confusing so it goes better with higher level students.

• A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

  The classic TV special, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, is a great introduction to Thanksgiving particularly for EFL students who don’t know a lot about the holiday. This lesson plan provides some materials to help students understand the video and this American holiday.

• High School Beginners: Lesson 1

  This is a basic lesson plan I put together for a class with teenagers from 15-22 in a vocational school. The students were beginner to elementary level. My main goals were to test their level, and lay a foundation of the basics for future classes, as well as to give them some classroom English.

60-90 mins

• First Impressions

  Can’t remember how I came across the article in the first place, but as soon as I saw that a newspaper had photographed ordinary people and then asked other people what their impressions of the photographs were, I knew I had a lesson plan here. It’s a great way to practice talking about people.

• Happiness

  This discussion lesson plan explores the idea of happiness by having students evaluate their own happiness, think about the happiness level of their nation as a whole and look at data on the world’s happiest countries. Then students can talk about what they think about measuring happiness. A lot of extension ideas here.

• What a Wonderful World

  A lesson plan for beginners on the classic song by Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World” that promotes learner autonomy by breaking students into groups and giving each group a different assignment. The tasks focus on vocabulary, writing, grammar and comprehension.

• The Environment and Slow Cities

  A discussion lesson plan on ecology, environmental protection and the slow city (Cittaslow) movement.

• Christmas

  A Christmas lesson plan that discusses the American Santa Claus and his counterparts in other parts of the world. Since I teach in the post-Soviet Union, where Ded Moroz, or Grandfather Frost, brings presents on New Year’s Day and has some other differences, I thought a comparison of Kazakhstan’s holiday traditions and American traditions was a good introduction to Christmas. But of course, you could compare American Santa Claus and Sinterklass or other variations in your students’ cultures.

• Land Called Paradise

  This is a lesson based on a movie by Muslim American filmmaker Lena Khan. She took a song by Muslim-American singer and songwriter Kareem Salama and made a sort of unofficial music video by asking Muslims what messages they wanted to send to the US about Islam. It’s a really funny and touching short film that should generate a lot of discussion as well as providing comprehension activities in listening and watching movies. Students can also make a project of doing a similar film to spread their message to the world.

• Culture Role Play

  This is an activity that that I adapted from the US Peace Corp’s clasroom guide, Building Bridges. Students role play two different cultures and interact with each other. Then the class can discuss how cultural differences can be misinterpreted. The activity was originally designed for students in the US and I changed it around a bit to make it more accessible to ESL learners of all levels and to make it more universally appropriate.

• Corruption

  A discussion-oriented lesson that comes at the concept of corruption from a number of point of views to get students talking including giving them situations, a case-study and research on international corruption.

• Halloween

  This is a fun Halloween lesson plan that includes a lot of different kinds of activities, talking about Halloween traditions, learning the vocabulary of monsters, and reading and telling scary stories. The activities can all be used separately of course.

• Newspaper

  This is a lesson plan I originally devised to go with the Straightforward Intermediate textbook, lesson 8A on newspapers. I thought it would be good to bring in some realia so I bought an English newspaper and came up with this activity sheet for my student. I think it works well as a stand-alone activity. And of course it could be adapted to work with a news website

• Present Simple and Everyday Routines

  I designed this lesson plan based on the fairly standard one of teaching present simple, every day activities and adverbs of frequency, while trying to keep in mind the critique that this can lead to inauthentic sentences (How often do you take a shower? Sometimes-who talks like that?).

• Jobs and Families

  This lesson plan was designed for high-school beginners as an early lesson to test their level and give them a basic framework for communication. The topic today was jobs and also family words.

• 9/11 and Park 51

  A discussion lesson about Sept. 11th and specifically the decision whether or not to build a Muslim community center/mosque near Ground Zero in New York City. While I usually avoid controversial topics like religion and terrorism, I did find that students were respectful and certainly interested in the topic.

• More Basics for Beginners

  This is another lesson plan I put together for working with young adult beginners. This lesson covers both asking for and giving basic biographical information like name, phone number, address and “Can I/May I” to ask for permission.

• Money Money Money

  A discussion lesson plan on money. Specifically on how students spend money and their attitudes toward shopping and saving money.