Lesson Plans

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”.

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.

Writing Good TOEFL Paragraphs Quickly

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

Appearance

Every textbook has a lesson for describing people. But I wanted a lesson plan designed for more advanced students that got into words like chin, forehead and eyebrows and also some expressions like, “He has a face like a truck”. So here are some worksheets and a lesson plan to teach more advanced expressions for describing what people look like.
Objectives

To introduce students to advanced ways of describing appearances
To teach students which expressions are offensive and which are not
To give students practice using adjectives and expressions to describe people
Materials

Facial Features [PDF]
Adjectives …Continue

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.

Accents

Another lesson plan that comes from my speaking club. This one focuses on accents and regional forms of English which is a topic that students don’t know a lot about. It can be a lot of fun for them to practice new accents. As a side-effect they get a little bit of focus on pronunciation. And of course this lesson dispels the myth that there is one correct way to speak English.

Inversion With the Conditional

The thing I hate about teaching obscure grammar points is that students don’t understand why they need to know this. So when it came to teaching the conditional with inversion (without if), as in “Had I known it was your birthday, I would have sent you a card”, I really felt it had to start with a text. And that text had to be formal in nature. So this activity uses a welcome letter from a fancy hotel. Then students get to write their own rules.
Objectives

To introduce students to the …Continue

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.

Ordering at a Restaurant for Beginners

I have an intermediate/advanced level restaurant lesson but being able to order food is a good skill for elementary or beginner students to have. I also like the idea of sneaking “would” into the elementary vocabulary. When you get into more complicated forms of “would” later, it makes it that much easier for them.
So here’s how I do ordering at a restaurant with beginner students. The goal of the lesson is to get them to do a role play of being at a restaurant, so the focus of the lesson …Continue

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.

Ireland

I’ve always thought St. Patrick’s Day was a good chance to teach about Ireland. I’ve found lessons focused on St. Patrick come out too religious and lessons about the holiday itself tend toward discussions of heavy drinking. One good activity that has worked well in the past for lessons on a country is a good old Webquest. So here’s a little webquest/scavenger hunt about Ireland with a few longer extension assignments. All the Webquest questions have been tested as being not too hard to find using key words, but some …Continue

Find Someone Who, Greet Them As If

A new twist on “Find Someone Who”

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.

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.