Submitted by Sally Trowbridge on 22 May, 2012 - 12:12
The beginning of a meeting presents a major dilemma: is it better to get straight down to business, or is it important to allow or even encourage small talk? The texts in this lesson present arguments from opposing viewpoints, which may help students to question their own assumptions. The lesson goes on to introduce useful language for both small talk and getting down to business, with practice in the form of role-plays.
Submitted by Sally Trowbridge on 13 May, 2012 - 12:33
Since its development in the 1950s, brainstorming has become one of the most common techniques used in meetings to generate ideas. However, despite its clear benefits, the technique has its faults and many improvements have been suggested and analysed. This lesson aims to provide practice of brainstorming at the same time as exploring possible improvements. The second half of the lesson focuses on the necessary follow-up to brainstorming: evaluating ideas. This means the lesson covers two of the key language functions of meetings: making suggestions and agreeing/disagreeing.
In this lesson students practise speaking, reading and writing while talking about the fastest and slowest animals. The grammar focus is comparatives and superlatives with quantifiers. Students also learn some unusual animal vocabulary.
Submitted by Paul Braddock on 12 April, 2012 - 08:26
This is a lesson based on money, though students’ own attitudes can be kept private if they so desire. And it can remain so, but as a conversation topic, money is a veritable gold mine!
Load the I can run song. Review the actions in the song through mime. Play Simon Says.
Listen and watch the song. Give the Ss the activity sheet folded in half and they complete the first activity.
Play the song again. The Ss sing along and do the actions.
Ask the Ss if they can do the actions, e.g. “Can you swim?” etc. Ss complete the second activity on the activity sheet.
Brainstorm some more actions with the Ss, e.g. climb, ski, spin, cook, etc. Write the actions on the board. Nominate two Ss to ‘play’. Get any of the Ss to ask you various ‘Can you’ questions with those actions. For every question from the Ss, you should say “No, I can’t”, until for one random question you say “Yes, I can” – at which point the nominated Ss must race to the board and be the first to touch that action with their finger. Ss could also play this game in groups of 3 or more with the words written on paper.
Ss write 5 questions for a class survey. Demonstrate the activity first, then Ss survey their classmates. Afterwards, Ss could turn their results into a bar chart. Depending on your Ss, you might want to prepare a blank survey table/bar graph as a worksheet first.
Ss vote for their 4 favourite alternate actions, and sing the song again with them, doing the actions.
Submitted by Sally Trowbridge on 5 September, 2011 - 18:42
British kids are having problems at school. In this lesson, students read about a TV chef who wants to improve education in Britain. They invent their ideal school and then present their ideas to their classmates.
