Premier Skills English - a project promoting English learning through football - organised a lesson plan competition. To enter you have to register on the site, watch and choose one video (interview with players) and design a lesson plan around it. The deadline for applying is 10th April - so you still have time. The winner is the entry with the most shares.
I have also entered the competition and submitted a lesson plan. Please consider checking out my submission and sharing it if you find it worthy :) Thank you!
This nice song starts with the verse entirely in Present Perfect Continuous so I used it as an extension activity with my Intermediate students following the revision lesson on PPC.
1. Start with a song dictoglos activity. Tell the Ss that they are going to listen to the song and the first part consists of 5 sentences in PPC. Then play the verse a couple of times, allowing students to write and compare their results .(They are fairly easy to grasp since they have the same beginning). Do a whole-class check and write up the sentences on the board. Here you can focus on the language a little bit more and draw your Ss attention to the fact that there is no usual time indicator like for or since. Or ask them to listen to pronunciation changes that occur in fast speech (dropping of "v" sound).
2. Prediction. Now it's time to look at the meaning of the lines. Ask Ss to predict what's the song about based on the beginning. Depending on how much time you have the descriptions can be more or less detailed.
3. Listen to the song and check the predictions. If the Ss can't get much from listening you can elicit general idea: is it a happy or a sad story?
4. Listening more closely. Give out the lyrics of the song. Ask Ss to listen again and cross out an extra word in every line. Compare in pairs, then do a whole-class check.
5. Now it's time to look at some possibly new words and phrases. I found that the text of the song doesn't have many difficult or unknown words for Intermediate students. However, their combination can cause some problems. So we discussed some of the questions related to expressions in the text
When do people bleed? Can you bleed from non-physical causes? If I bleed out for somebody how do I feel about the person? It's quite a tricky question, you can refer Ss to the urban dictionary definition that gives an insight into this line. What can make a person think that he/she doesn't belong? Have you ever felt this way? What can go wrong in the relationship? China Town, Canal and Bowery are the places in the city. Can you guess which city it is? (answer: New York)
6. If you think your Ss understood the lyrics ask them to reconstruct the story of the couple working in pairs/groups. What happened? Are they together or not? How do they feel? What was the reason for their break up? Why is he regretting about her not taking the bus? What would have happened if she had taken it?
Hopefully, Ss got some ideas in the previous stage and can imagine the rest. If they are having a block, you can prompt them with more questions. Help with any vocabulary or grammar questions.
7. Ss write up their stories on the pieces on papers (I don't think they should be too long, 5-7 sentences should be enough) and display them around the room. Allow everyone to read each other's stories.
8. Within the same pair/ group Ss choose the story they liked the most (it shouldn't be theirs) and write up a dialogue between the main character and the girl based on the story. Ask them to imagine their meeting on the Canal a month later and come up with a short conversation.
9. Ss role-play the dialogues. For homework, they can write a letter to the main character from the point of view of a girl.
Last week my class was revising I wish constructions and I tried to find a new way to talk about it. I found the perfect song and this is how you can use it.
1. Ask Ss what people usually regret about. Elicit 4-5 categories such as appearance, money, family etc.
2. Ss work in pairs and tell each other the regrets they may have from this categories. They report back to the teacher on what they've found out from their partners.
3. Show 4 stills from the video. Ask: what does this person regret about? Elicit - relationships/love. Tell Ss you're going to listen to the song where the singer has a lot of regrets and wishes about her relationships. First of all, they have to look at the video stills and try to finish the phrases.
4. Ss report on their guesses.
5. Play the video while Ss check their prediction. Elicit the correct sentences.
Ask: What kind of song is it? How does the singer feel? Do you remember any other regrets she has?
6. Give Ss the gapped text of the song. Listen to it one more time and ask them to complete the gaps.
7. Check the answers and any unknown vocabulary.
8. Ask them to describe how the singer feels, what she means with the sentences like "I wish that you knew when I said two sugars I actually meant three".
9. In the next task ask your Ss to be creative and write an extra verse for this song that follows the patter "I wish ...". Remind them that they have to write it from the point of view of the singer. If your Ss are not on-the-spot-creative gave it to them for homework as I did.
10. The last activity I took from Carissa Peck's blog. She describes it prettey well in her blog. It is fun and perfect for this lesson. At home prepare the papers with I wish sentences. For example I wish I had longer nose, I wish I had pizza for every meal etc. Give them to students on the lesson and ask them to make a doodle. Then they cover the sentences and pass the doodle around. Next person has to write a sentence with I wish that describes the doodle. The papers have to come the full cicrle. At the end, roll out the papers and check if anyone's sentence has been guessed. I guarantee you, it's loads of fun!
I like using popular game shows in my class. Here is one example that fit well in my class on relative clauses and the topic of entertainment - Pyramid. It is an American game show based on guessing words. Level:
confident pre-intermediate, intermediate and above What you need:
video projector/ a laptop
cards with words
paper pyramid (or whiteboard to draw it on)
Procedure:
1) Exposure. We followed Upbeat Intermediate book and they present the topic of relative clauses through the text about the entertainment. Ss had to read it at home. So we started off with the discussion of the text.
2) Presentation. I used part of the sentences from the text to draw attention to the structure of relative clauses. My students were quite familiar with the topic, so I let them talk and elicited as much as possible about the difference between defining and non-defining relative clauses. To introduce some new information I drew their attention to the cases where relative pronoun can be omitted
3) Practice. Do some controlled practice first. I had an exercise in the book fitting my aims perfectly, so Ss did it on their own and then compared in pairs. Do the whole class feedback.
4) For a less controlled practice I chose a simple definition game. The aim of the game is to define a word that you have on a card. I demonstrated the activity by giving them couple of riddles. Elicit the language we use to describe people, things, actions such as It is a person who It is what you do when
I used a worksheet from New English File Pre-Intermediate Teacher's book Unit 1D. Set the time, monitor the activity and help with difficult words if necessary.
5) Say that today you're going to play a more complicated and more exciting game. Show them the video from Friends and ask what the rules of the game are.
or the longer one with worse quality
Questions to ask: What should you do? How many people play this game? How are you supposed to do it? How much time do you have?
6) Watch again and ask Ss whether Joey is good at this game and why/why not.
7) Consolidate the rules of the game and write up do's and don'ts for the game
8) Now it's time to play Pyramid! Divide your class in pairs or teams, if you have an uneven number of students one of them could be a facilitator.
9) Reveal (or draw) the Pyramid. You can choose to put the names of the categories inside the pyramid, or just put the numbers which adds an element of surprise. That's what I did and it looked like this
Here is the worksheet that I made. I glued the questions to the cards to make it a little bit more official and easy to hand.
10) Ss chose the category/number, decide who is going to explain the word. Then you (or facilitator) set te time and the game begins!
The team with more points win. That's it! There could be additional variations and rounds if you feel like spending the whole lesson on it.
The teams can drop out of the competition (think ahead about how to occupy them ) and the best ones should battle in the finale.
In the language school where I teach end of the year means exams. We spend a lot of time preparing and revising. That's why by the end of the year my teenagers feel exhausted.
This is how my students feel at the end of the year, I imagine
To lighten the mood I try to leave the last lesson (which is also a lesson before the exam) for something entertaining and relaxing. I usually go with a variation of a classical quiz. This time around I decided to quiz them on the topics they are quite familiar with.
The topic of the Jeopardy was themselves, their peers, teacher and our lessons.
The categories were
Our students
Our teacher
Our lessons
Our world
The questions are the most important part of this game. Try to recall all of the funny situations, inside jokes and hilarious stories that happened throughout the course and made them into questions. Some of the examples from my quiz.
Students: "Where does Katya go every weekend?" (She spends every weekend in her country house and tells me about it every Monday) or "In the "reunion" activity Borya had that many children" (Obviously, requires some remembering).
Our teacher: "What instrument did you teacher use to play?", "Once, your teacher told you a story about the terrible journey she had. Remember where from and where to she was travelling".
Our lessons: "On the Valentines day we had a problem with our player. Remember what was the film we were trying to watch" and so on.
It's ideal if the questions are personal and funny. Although, they don't test any specific language point, it offers a great language practice in a relaxed and personalised way.
Procedure:
1) Draw up the Jeopardy grid on the board, with the above-mentioned categories at the top of the column. Each category had 5 possible options from 100 to 500. The more expensive it is the more difficult it's supposed to be.
2) Divide the class in teams in any manner you want.
3) A team takes turn choosing the category and the "price". Read the question you prepared. They have 20 seconds for discussion.
3) If their answer is correct, they get the points. If not, another team has a go. However, it has only 10 seconds to discuss. And here is the twist: in case the opposing team gives the correct answer, they get twice as many points as the initial price.
4) Deduct points for using L1 or any possible discipline issues. Of course, it's better to inform the students about it before the start of the game.
5) The winner is the team with the highest score. You can award them with funny certificates, sweets or stationary.
My students loved it and it was the best possible way to finish the school year.
I have a Pre-Intermediate business group and we've been covering a lot of negotioating language material. (We have The Business pre-int book). To liven up the classes a little bit I decided to show them a part of American TV show Shark Tank. There is a British version called Dragon's Den, but, in my opinion, the former is much more entertaining. The premise of both shows is entrepreneurs' search for investment in their, often a bit crazy, product or service. This is the activity I've developed.
1. First, introduce the show and watch the beginning of the episode and ask students to sum up the purpose of Shark Tank. Then give them the names of the sharks, play video again and ask them to connect the shark and the description.
Kevin O'Leary
Barbara Corcoran
Daymond John
Robert Herjavec
Marc Cuban
Immigrant who has a technology business
Venture capitalist who started his software business in a basement
Billionaire who also owns a sports team
Real estate entrepreneur from New York
Owner of fashion brand FUBU
2. After checking the information about the investors, move on to the episode. I chose a part of episode 3 from season 3 about an entrepreneur who created parfume called Money. You can find it on youtube, the part starts from 11.33
Watch the beginning of his speech till 12.30, stop the video and ask students what his product is. Even if some language is still a little bit difficult at this point, they will be able to understand the idea from the visuals. Make them discuss what they think about this idea, whether it can be successful or not.
3. At this point you may want to introduce some challenging vocabulary. I picked the following words: bill, the come up with, to licence, distribution, retailers, to seek, scent, fragrance, subtle. Then start from the top again and watch the video till 15.35 and ask students to find answers to the following questions.
How
much money is he seeking?
Does he own the name?
What
are his sales?
What
is the problem with retailers?
How
much has he invested?
How
did he come up with
this idea?
What
kind of proposal did banks make him?
What's
unique about his packaging?
What
do you think is his USP?
(The last question was inspired by the topic of advertisement we've studied recently. If your students are not familiar with this concept yout can omit it)
4. After students check the answers in pairs and with the teacher (you may need to rewatch some parts), ask them whether they think he would strike a deal with anyone. Then watch the rest of the video which contains the negotiations and ask them to answer the following questions
Which
sharks are out? Why?
Which
shark(s) make(s) offers? What kind of offer?
Does he
accept the offer(s)? Why/Why not?
5. You can have an open discussion afterwards on whether he made the right choice or not.
6. Then move on to the tasks on the language from the video. I decided to focus on some colloquial phrases the sharks and the entrepreneur used. In this activity, students watch the video again and put the phrases in the order they hear them and write the name of the speaker next to them. In pairs they discuss the meaning of the phrases.
You
are a wantepreneur
not an entrepreneur
You
have an offer on a table
Can
I get an Amen?
Preach, brother, preach!
The
80% was just out of line
Money
can't buy you happiness... but who
cares?
This
is your big play
here. You got to walk out of the tank with the cash
in your pocket.
That's
always a red flag.
7. After you have checked the understanding, you can have a role-play. My students have written a business plan for a food business before, so we used it as a material for presentation. Students worked in two teams where one team was presenting their business and the second was acting as investors. Their purpose was to decide whether to sponsor the business or not. You can distribute the lines from previous exercise and ask students to use them in their speech.
8. As a homework option I developed two vocabulary exercises on the language from the video. If students really enjoyed it you can ask them to watch the first part of the video (the guitar entrepreneur) at home and write a short summary (what's the business, details of the business, how negotiations went, did he strike a deal etc).
Student's worksheet with answers is available here.
