The secret life of pets

I'm sharing the first activity I presented last Friday at Abs Congress. It's a lesson plan for A1 students with different alternatives to work on grammar and lexis. The movie is called "the secret life of pets" and it revolves around pets and how they spend their days once the owners have left their homes.

I hope you find the activities useful.

Trailer Number one:

Here you have the activities:

Trailer number 2:

Here's the worksheet.

Stay tuned,

Claudio

Emotional intelligence

Hey everyone!

I'm sharing an activity I presented in the I teach kids and teens congress. It's a lesson plan for elementary students to work on emotions, adjectives, nouns, functions and frequency adverbs!

I haven't had the chance to try it with my students yet; therefore, I wait for your comments on how your students liked it.

Here's the worksheet.

Stay tuned,

Claudio

Meeting your in-laws

I created this activity for students to work on question forms and dialogues when meeting someone for the first time. I used this task with elementary adult students for them to practice and apply question forms in the (terrifying for many) context of meeting your son's or daughter's boyfriend or girlfriend.


Warm up (whole class):

Imagine your son / daughter invited his boyfriend / girlfriend to your house for the first time. What questions would you ask him or her? Share.

Activity 1:

Organize the words to make questions – Tick the ones you think are more likely to be asked.

• you do alone live ?
• An fly in today you airplane did?
• how earn money do much you ?
• you do where live?
• your what plans are future for the ?
• did for tonight eat pot roast dinner you?
• it was under-cooked?
• you daughter love my do?
• you videos have watched pornographic ever?
• girl did meet you where my?

Activity 2: 

Watch the videos and check if your predictions were correct.

Closure: 

Role play the scene using the following expressions:

In-law	Boyfriend / girlfriend
Tell me more about your life… What do you like to do? That’s interesting/ good/ nice… That sounds great/ fantastic… Me too… What about your future plans?	What do you want to know? I like/ love… I hate/ dislike/ can’t stand… I work at… I live in… I’m good at… I’m interested in… I want to… I would like to…

As a follow up: Students could enter to dvolver.com and create a movie that portrays this situation. Here you have an example:

Here's a presentation I used.

I hope you find it useful.

Regards,

Claudio

More questions

Since the first version was pretty popular among teachers, I'm sharing a second version of this simple and
yet effective activity to practice question forms. As in the previous version, students will have the chance to to work on word order, listen to songs and have fun at the same time. They organize the words and then listen to check. I generally have them compete for the names of the artists as well. If they can say who the artist is before listening, they get 3 points, if they realize it after listening, they get 1. I leave the answer key just in case you want to use it this way:

James Blunt, Guns n' Roses, David Bowie, Arctic Monkeys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alanis Morisette, Brandon Flowers (x2), Pink Floyd, REM, Radiohead, Creedence, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Metallica, Guns n' Roses, Hugh Laurie (Doctor House!)

Here's the presentation and the audio.

If you have any suggestions, perhaps we can have a third version!

There's more coming soon...
Claudio

Question forms

A simple exercise to work on question forms. Students will order the words to make some questions. After that, they will listen in order to check whether they were right or not.

Here's the presentation.

Here's the audio:

  

This way they will practice grammar and listening skills. Besides, thanks to the power of music, people are more likely to remember a song than a formula and, therefore, naturally aprehend the structure.