The End of the World

It's been a while since I've posted anything but a mixture of great weather, end of year rush and two weddings have kept me away from the computer.

So here's a conversation loosely based around the recent story in the news about the end of the world.  The lesson focuses mainly on fluency, talking about hypothetical situations, regrets and wishes and a roleplay.

Lesson focus: Conversation
Level: Advanced
Time: 1-1.5 hour

Intro
Hand out worksheet 1 and ask the students if they know who Harold Camping is (an American preacher who predicted the end of the world on the 21st May at 6pm).    Get the students to read through the text and ask them to discuss the words in bold.  Follow up by pairing the students up and getting them to answer the questions at the bottom of the page, monitor the discussions to make sure they understand the questions.

Wishing Game
Hand out worksheet 2 along with a dice and counters to each group of two or three.  The students have to roll the dice and move round the board expressing regrets based on the topics they land on using the form "I wish I had..."

Roleplay
This roleplay is based on a popular pub conversation I regularly had with a good friend of mine.  Put the students into groups of  4 and hand out worksheet 3.  Set the scene for the students explaining that it is 2020 and the Human Race faces annihilation.  They are the most important leaders in the world and must try to save Mankind by creating a special team of people whose job it is to re-colonise the world after the meteor has hit.  They must choose 10 people based on their skills, occupations, characteristics to be included in the team. Get the students to justify their answers.

Discussion
Finish off with a group discussion if you have a small class, or split the class into small groups if you have a large class and monitor.  Hand out the discussion questions and get the students to have a conversation about the questions they find most interesting.  Get the students to answer as fully as possible and to comment on each other's views.  Listen for common mistakes and do a correction slot to finish off.

So there you are, I hope you enjoy.

Worksheet 1
Worksheet 2
Worksheet 3
Worksheet 4
  

Poetry

Try this simple warm activity to bring some creativity into your classroom.

Ask your students if there are any poets in the class and then explain that they are going to be writing a poem titled "You".  The first step is to get the students thinking of someone who they either really love or that they really hate.  Explain that they must have very strong emotions towards this person but not to worry as no-one in the class needs to know who it is.

Next write up on the board eight lines beginning "You are....". This is the structure of your poem.  Beside one of the lines, write up (a type of food).  Ask the students to imagine their person as a type of food and elicit some examples.  You may have to give an example to get them started, ie. "You are a strawberry ice-cream." Once the students get the idea, write up next to each line of the poem a topic you'd like them to imagine their person as, ie. a type of furniture, a type of transport, a colour, a month of the year, etc.  Offer some examples of your own to the students.

Once you have the students writing out their poems, explain to them that because poems come "straight from the heart" they are read with lots of emotion.  Ask them to imagine how they feel when they read each line of the poem and ask them to write down the emotion next to it.  Again the secret is to offer some examples of your own and act it out, ie. "You are a thunderstorm!" ANGER.  Read out you examples putting as much over-acting into the lines as possible.  The students will love it and it'll break the ice for them before they have to read out their poems.

Finally, after checking for any errors in the poems, get the students to read them out.  Encourage the students to put as much emotion as possible (and possibly actions) into their readings as they can.  The result is usely a lot of hilarity for all!  The best thing about this activity is that it is very simple and great for mixed level classes as they stronger students can make more of their poems by adding adjectives, compound adjectives and so-on and the weaker ones can keep it fairly simple.  So try it out.

Agony Aunt - Can I sell my leg?

Here is a fun lesson that introduces the topic of agony aunts, dilemmas and giving advice, it also introduces some idioms related to money.  The level is upper-intermediate to advanced.

Warm Up

First step, tell the students that they're going to read two short pieces of text. Next hand out the word clouds for the two agony aunt letters and ask the students to come up with ideas about what the texts could be about and discuss any .words they find interesting.

Reading

Hand out the vocabulary matching exercise and get the students to match the phrases to the definitions.  Once they've done that hand out the agony aunt letters and their replies.  These letters were taken from a spoof news website so are not serious and they should get some laughs.  Discuss any parts of the letters that are needed and then ask the students how they would advise the two writers.

Discussion

Make some flashcards with different dilemmas on them (about 10 - 12) and put them face down in front of the group.  I use some dilemmas from a textbook "Innovations Advanced" by Morgan Lewis for ease but it is probably worth making up your own humorous situations.  Get each student to take a card and explain what their dilemma is and have the other students give advice.  This is perfect practice for using the 2nd conditional, ie. If I were you, I'd .....

Follow Up

If you want to expand on the exercise then what you can do is get the student in groups of 2-3 to pick a dilemma from the pile, or think of one of their own and write it down in the form of an agony aunt letter.  Then get the groups to swap their letters and have them write a reply.

Enjoy.

Worksheets

Can I sell my leg word cloud
I have magic children word cloud
Vocab matching exercise
Agony aunt letters

A Quick Post

Just a very quick post as I've been very busy for the last few days.  First of all, happy Commonwealth Day to all those who care! (I know it was yesterday but again, time was not on my side, I'll have my quiet tribute tonight.) What will be up and coming in the next few days will be a fun conversation on giving advice, in the form of agony aunts and an advanced article about a disabled, muslim superhero with lots of scope for discussions on disability, ethnic tensions and over-coming adversity.

Create Your Own Country

Here is a conversation lesson that gets the students to invent their own country.  The target language is the demographics and cultures of a country. The plan I have here is for upper intermediate and advanced students, but with a bit of adapting it can be used for all levels.

This is a fun lesson that should take about one hour to complete.

Enjoy.

Create Your Own Country Lesson Plan