Clothes lesson plan

Stand-alone lesson ESL kids lesson plan

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Clothes

In this lesson students practice talking about different clothes. Students play a fun dressing up game, sing a song, read a story and do a clothes craft.

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Time: 40 mins – 1 hour
Objectives: Talking about different clothes.
Structures: “Let’s get dressed”, “Put on your ~”, “Quick, get ready”, “He/She is wearing ~”.
Target vocabulary: shirt, [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us], socks, jacket, shoes, hat (plus other clothing vocab for other clothes you can bring to class, such as skirt, dress, coat, jeans, shorts, blouse, sweater, [hide_on_uk]necktie[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]tie[/hide_on_us], t-shirt, vest).

Lesson materials

Flashcards:

shirt, [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us], socks, jacket, shoes, hat (plus other clothing flashcards for other clothes you can bring to class, such as skirt, dress, coat, jeans, shorts, blouse, sweater, [hide_on_uk]necktie[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]tie[/hide_on_us], t-shirt, vest).

Printables:

Dress up craft sheet (for lower levels) or Clothes craft sheet (for higher levels)
[hide_on_uk]Colorful[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Colourful[/hide_on_us] clothes worksheet or Jungle clothes worksheet (depending on the level of your students)
Reader worksheet

Songs:

Let’s get dressed

Readers:

Let’s get dressed

Additional materials:

Clothes vocab crossword
Clothes vocab word search
[hide_on_uk]Color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Colour[/hide_on_us] your clothes worksheet

Supplies:

[hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] crayons / pencils
[hide_on_uk]marker pens[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]felt tip pens[/hide_on_us]
lots of old, adult-sized clothes (as many as you can get). For these you need at least shirts, [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us], socks, jackets, shoes, hats. Also, other clothes, though not essential, will be great, such as skirts, dresses, coats, jeans, shorts, blouses, sweaters, [hide_on_uk]neckties[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]ties[/hide_on_us], t-shirts, vests
board with chalk / markers
Blu-Tack or something to stick flashcards on the board
scissors
glue
[hide_on_uk]catalogs[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]catalogues[/hide_on_us] or magazines (with lots of clothes pictures)
A3 paper or construction paper to stick the [hide_on_uk]catalog[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]catalogue[/hide_on_us]/magazine pictures on (1 sheet per group of students)
device to play the song on

Notes:

This is an active lesson with a really fun dressing up game.
IMPORTANT: You will need to prepare some old clothes to use in the lesson (see point 1 below).

Lesson procedure:

Warm up and maintenance:

The beginning of your lesson is extremely important: this is where you set the tone of your lesson and get everyone in the right frame of mind for learning English. It is also an opportunity to check homework and review previous lessons.

Click for warm up suggestions for the start of your lessons

Print this warm up and maintenance section

These activities can be done in the following order at the start of your lesson:

1. Welcoming
Greet the students by name as they enter the classroom and gesture for them to sit down. If you have space on the floor, it’s a good idea to have a cushion for each student as this makes sitting arrangements easy to [hide_on_uk]organize[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]organise[/hide_on_us]. Try and arrange the cushions beforehand spaced out in a fan-shape around you.

2. Name tags
Before class prepare some name tags (stickers or pin-on tags) with each student’s name written in lower case letters. Sit down with your students and lay out the name tags in front of you. Pick up each tag and call out the name. Try and encourage each student to put their hand up and say “yes”. Hand over the tags and help to pin / stick on. Later on as your students recognize their written names you can have each student in turn pick out their own name tag.

3. Greetings
Use a glove puppet (such as a Sesame Street puppet) to greet the students. Keep him in a cloth bag. Bring out the bag, open it enough to see in and shout into the bag the puppet’s name (e.g. “Cookie Monster!”). Then move your ear to the opening to listen – nothing. Go to each student and encourage them to shout the puppet’s name into the bag – each time nothing happens. Finally, get all the students together to shout the name at the same time. This time the puppet wakes up and jumps out of the bag! The puppet then chats to each student:

Puppet (teacher): Hello, What’s your name?
Student Hello. My name is….
Puppet: Goodbye / See you!
Student: Goodbye / See you!

As your students learn more phrases, you can include them in the conversation, such as “How old are you? Do you like …?, Can you …?, etc.

Finally, the puppet goes back into the bag and back to sleep.

4. Sing the “Hello song” or a review song
Sit in a circle and sing along to the song. Encourage students to clap along or pat their laps in time with the music. The Hello song is a good song to start the lesson with, especially as it has an accompanying Goodbye song to sing at the end of the lesson.

Lyrics for the “Hello song”

Hello, hello, Hello, hello,
How are you? How are you?
I’m fine, thank you, I’m fine, thank you,
We’re ok, We’re ok.

Lyrics for “The Hello Song”

Hello, hello,
How are you today?
Hello, hello,
How are you today?

I’m fine, thank you,
I’m fine, thank you,
I’m fine, thank you,
And how about you?

Hello, hello,
How are you today?
I’m fine, thank you,
And how about you?

Gestures for the “Hello song”

These are quite straight forward. First time you play the song do the gestures and encourage everyone to do them with you.

Wave as you sing the “Hello, hello” parts.
Gesture to others as you sing, “How are you today?”
Point to yourself as you sing, “I’m fine, thank you”
Hand gesture towards another student as you sing, “And how about you?”.

[hide_on_uk]Short sample (members get full-length song):
 [/hide_on_uk]

[hide_on_us]Short sample (members get full-length song):
 [/hide_on_us]

5. Read a classroom reader again
As you progress through the lessons you will start to build up a catalog of classroom readers. Kids love going back to old stories and reading through them again. Invite a student to pick a classroom reader and read through it as a class. Make the story as interactive as possible by asking questions (e.g. what [hide_on_uk]colors[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colours[/hide_on_us] there are, the names of different objects, etc.) and getting students to speculate what is going to happen next in the story.

6. Homework check
Check each student’s homework set in the last lesson. Ask each student some questions about their homework worksheet (e.g. “what [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] is it?”), give lots of praise, and then put some kind of mark on the homework sheet (e.g. a sticker, a stamp or draw a smiley face). Finally, tell your students to put their homework back into their bags.

7. Do “Exercise routine” activity
Say the following and have your students follow your lead: “Stand up (teacher stands and so does everyone else), “Hands up / hands down” (x 3-5), “Jump” (x3-5), “Run! / Stop!” (x3-5), “Turn around! / Stop!” (x3-5), finally “Sit down”.

Throughout the course you can introduce other commands, such as “Hop”, “Star Jump”, “Wiggle”, “Crouch” and so on.

Extra activity: Once your students have got to know these exercises you can play “Teacher says” using these actions.

How to play … Teacher says:

This is basically the game ‘Simon says’ but using the words “Teacher says” instead. The teacher tells the students to do an action and they do as asked (e.g. “Teacher says … jump 3 times”). The teacher keeps on giving instructions with different actions using “Teacher says …”. At some point the teacher gives a command without using the phrase “Teacher says” (e.g. “Hop 5 times”) and the students must not do that action – they have to stay still. Any students that do the action have to sit out for the rest of the game. The last student standing is the winner.

8. Name writing practice
If your students cannot write their names yet, this is a great activity. For really young ones, don’t worry if their effort is a scrawly mess – always encourage and praise.

You will need to prepare a writing sheet for each student before class with their name written in dots for them to practice tracing their names (also prepare one for yourself so you can model the task). You can either make these yourself (hand draw the dots for each name) or use a font typed into a Word document – we like to use the “National First Font Dotted” font (you can download it for free here: http://www.fontspace.com/roger-white/national-first-font-dotted).

Prepare the sheets something like this:

Tip:

Make a few extra copies of each student’s name writing sheet so you can use them in future lesson or for homework.

When everyone has finished writing their names, get each student to hold up their sheet so you and everyone can see. Give lots of praise to each student.

9. Review past lessons
Reviewing past lessons is very important – students need constant practice of new vocab, structures, songs, games and so on. Always review parts of your last lesson as well as some parts from other previous lessons. You can spend 5-10 minutes reviewing – it’s fine to recycle games and activities from your past lessons to review as kids enjoy playing familiar games (although be careful not to play a game to death!).

Note: You can also include review activities in the main body of your lesson. Kids can have short attention spans so it’s good to be able to pull out lots of activities during different stages of the lesson.

Other ideas to include in your warm up:

What’s in the bag?
This is a great activity to do at the beginning of your lessons. Fill a large cloth bag with items from your previous lessons (e.g. plastic fruit, animals, etc.). You can also throw in a few other objects (e.g. a pencil, a plastic bottle, a plastic cup – anything lying around (and safe!)). Show the bag to your students and shake it to rattle the objects inside. Pull out different objects, teach/elicit their names, have students hold and pass the objects around. You can even have students pull objects out of the bag. Pull out 1 or 2 objects per student. Finally, place the objects around the classroom and have each student retrieve each object as you call out its name and put it back in the bag.

Knock-knock
This can be used at the beginning of each class. Teach the students to knock on the door before entering the classroom. There are 2 variations for the next step:

When the student knocks, teacher says, “Who’s there?”. The student replies, “It’s (Koji)” and then the teacher says, “Come in (Koji)”.
When the student knocks the teacher must guess who it is, “Is that (Koji)?”. The student replies yes or no – if no, the teacher continues guessing. Having your students develop their own knocking styles makes this even more fun.

Spin the bottle
Sit students in a circle with a bottle in the middle. Teacher spins the bottle. When it stops spinning the student it is pointing at has to answer a question. If the answer is correct then that student can spin the bottle. For example, How are you? What’s your name? What is this? (show an object or flashcard) Do you like _?, etc.

Talk about the weather (do after you have taught the weather lesson plan).

Prepare a weather board. Before the first class prepare a piece of cardboard and cover it with felt – you are going to pin this to the wall. If you can, try and get blue felt (to represent the sky). Write at the top in large letters, “How’s the weather today?”. Below the write “Today it’s”. Cut out weather pictures (such as our weather flashcards) and stick some velcro on the back. Arrange the weather pictures around the edge of the board and then put the board on the wall of your classroom. You can now use this weather board at the beginning of every lesson.
Sing “The weather song”. Sing the song together doing all of the gestures.
Look outside. Get everyone to look outside by saying, “How’s the weather? Look outside”. Elicit the weather for that day.
Put the weather pictures on the weather board. Invite some students to come up and put the weather pictures on the board. Make sure these students say the word as they put the card on the board.

New learning and practice:

1. Before class: Prepare as many old (adult-sized) clothes as possible
Before class you need to collect as many old (adult size) clothes as you can. Have at least the following: shirt, [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us], socks, jacket, shoes, hat – however, other clothes will be useful as well, such as skirt, dress, coat, jeans, shorts, blouse, sweater, [hide_on_uk]necktie[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]tie[/hide_on_us], t-shirt, vest. If you can’t get enough, ask parents to bring in some old clothes for the lesson. The clothes need to be adult size as the students are going to put them over their own clothes – having such big clothes actually makes the activity more fun!

2. Introduce the clothes vocabulary
No doubt the large pile of clothes in the classroom will have attracted a great amount of attention, so you’ll have little difficulty in introducing the topic!

Settle the class down and get everyone to sit down. Ask for a volunteer and have him/her stand at the front of the class with you. Tell the class the volunteer is going to get dressed up – with as many different types of clothes as possible! Pull out the first clothing item (e.g. a t-shirt). Elicit / teach and chorus the word for the item. Then help your volunteer to put it on. Only put on each item of clothing when you are satisfied that everyone has chorused the word correctly. Then move onto the next clothing item. As you select each item think about the order – you’ll want your volunteer to be putting the jacket, shoes and hat on last. Keep adding clothes until your volunteer is really well dressed up.

3. Practice the clothing vocabulary with flashcards
Help the volunteer undress and then get everyone to look at the board. Make sure you have the same clothing flashcards as the old clothes you are using. Stick the first flashcard on the board and elicit the vocabulary and write the word clearly below it. Do the same for all of the other flashcards.

Next tell everyone to close their eyes and remove one of the flashcards from the board. Now shout, “Open your eyes!” – everyone must shout out the missing flashcard. Play this until all the flashcards have been elicited.

4. Play “Team racing”
Divide the class into 2 teams. Line up the 2 teams at one end of the classroom with the old clothes on the floor at the other end. You will shout out an instruction (e.g. “Put on some socks!”) and one member from each team will race against the other to the pile of clothes, put on the clothing item and run back to their team. The person who gets back first wins a point for his/her team.

At the end, the team with the most points is the winner.

5. Sing the “Let’s get dressed” song
Prepare everyone for the song first. Make sure the following clothes are on the floor: shirt, [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us], socks, jacket, shoes, hat. If you have enough for everyone to get dressed at the same time you can do the song with everyone participating with the actions. If not, have a few students do the song actions while everyone else sings along (the words are simple) – you can give everyone a go by playing the song a few times.

The song is also an active listening exercise. Students will have to listen for the clothing item and then put it on. Pile the clothes in a big heap and start the song. As the first clothing item is mentioned (shirt) the students have to scramble in the pile of clothes to find a shirt and put it on before the next item of clothing is mentioned. As the song is played the students put on all the clothes until they are fully dressed. Then finish the game by getting the students to race in taking off their adult-sized clothes – the first to remove them is the winner!

Lyrics for “Let’s get dressed”

It’s time to go to school
Let’s get dressed!

Put on your shirt, put on your shirt,
Quick, get ready, put on your shirt.

Put on your [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us], put on your [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us],
Quick, get ready, put on your [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us].

Put on your socks, put on your socks,
Quick, get ready, put on your socks.

Put on your jacket, put on your jacket
Quick, get ready, put on your jacket.

Put on your shoes, put on your shoes,
Quick, get ready, put on your shoes.

Put on your hat, put on your hat,
Quick, get ready, put on your hat.

It’s time to go to school,
It’s time to go to school,
Quick, get ready, let’s get dressed!

Gestures for “Let’s get dressed”

During the song your students will play a wonderful dressing up game – a lot of fun! Before class you need to collect as many old (adult size) clothes as you can for the following vocab: shirt, [hide_on_uk]pants[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]trousers[/hide_on_us], socks, jacket, shoes, hat. If you can’t get enough, ask parents to bring in some old clothes for the lesson. The clothes need to be adult size as the students are going to put them over their own clothes – having such big clothes actually makes the activity more fun!

Depending on how many clothes you can find, you can either have everyone dress up at the same time or you can have a few students come up to the front of the class to do the activity.

Pile the clothes in a big heap and start the song. As the first clothing item is mentioned (shirt) the students have to scramble in the pile of clothes to find a shirt and put it on before the next item of clothing is mentioned. As the song is played the students put on all the clothes until they are fully dressed. Then finish the game by getting the students to race in taking off their adult-sized clothes – the first to remove them all is the winner!

[hide_on_uk]Short sample (members get full-length song):
 [/hide_on_uk]

[hide_on_us]Short sample (members get full-length song):
 [/hide_on_us]

6. Read classroom reader “Let’s get dressed”
Before class, download and print off the reader “Let’s get dressed”. As you go through each page, point to the pictures, elicit each key word, and have your students try to guess which item of clothing the character will put on next, for example:

Teacher: What’s this? (pointing at hat)
Students: It’s a hat!
Teacher: And what’s this? (pointing at shoes)
Students: Shoes!
etc.
Teacher: Ok, so what do you think Ken will put on first?
Students: His socks?
Teacher: Well, let’s see. (Turns page) … Oh look, it’s his shirt!
etc.

Get the students really involved in the story by asking lots of questions (e.g. eliciting [hide_on_uk]colors[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colours[/hide_on_us]) and getting them to point to their clothes as well.

After reading the story, give out a reader worksheet to each student and read through the story one more time (without stopping for questions, etc.) as students mark on their sheets the order that Ken puts his clothes on. Then go through the answers as a class.

Alternatively, watch our video version of the reader (Internet connection required).

7. Do cut and paste craft sheets
We have two different cut and paste craft sheets for clothes: “Dress up craft” (for lower levels) and “Clothes craft” (for higher levels). For younger students, cut out the clothes before class so they only need to [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] and glue the clothes onto the bodies. You can do this craft as an active listening exercise but giving instructions on which clothes to cut out and what colors they should be:

E.g. “First cut out the socks, [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] them blue and glue them on the boy”

So that everyone has to listen and cut out / [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] the correct items.

8. Create a “Clothes [hide_on_uk]catalog[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]catalogue[/hide_on_us] scene”
For this you will need to bring in some old [hide_on_uk]catalogs[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]catalogues[/hide_on_us] or magazines. Put the class into small groups and give each group a [hide_on_uk]catalog[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]catalogue[/hide_on_us], a large piece of construction paper/card, scissors, glue and some [hide_on_uk]marker pens[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]felt tip pens[/hide_on_us]. Tell the class that they have 10 minutes to create a scene with lots of people: the students will have to cut out clothes from their [hide_on_uk]catalog[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]catalogue[/hide_on_us] and draw to create the picture. It will help if you have already created your own scene so students can see what they have to do.

As everyone is creating their scenes, walk around the classroom asking lots of questions related to the vocabulary (What is he wearing?, etc.) and helping with any new vocabulary.

Finally, have each group present the scene using the structure “He / She is wearing” (e.g. “She is wearing a blue hat”). You can put all the scenes on the classroom walls as decoration and to review in future lessons.

Wrap up:

Assign homework: “[hide_on_uk]Colorful[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Colourful[/hide_on_us] clothes” worksheet or “Jungle clothes” worksheet
Select the worksheet which best suits the level of your students.

Click for wrap up suggestions for the end of your lessons

Print this wrap up section

1. Assign homework
Each week give out a homework worksheet for your students to take home. Hold up the homework worksheet and model how to do it. Give out the worksheets and say, “Put your homework in your bags” and help them to do so – this is important as they will probably want to start [hide_on_uk]coloring[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colouring[/hide_on_us] them right away.

Note:

If possible, encourage the parents to help out as much as possible with their child’s homework – it is a great way to have your students practice the target language outside of class.

2. Say goodbye to glove puppet
Take out the bag again and get everyone to wake up the glove puppet by shouting its name into the bag (e.g. “Cookie Monster!”). Bring out the puppet and go through the same routine – go to each student and say hello, ask their name and the say goodbye / see you. Then put the puppet back in the bag (back to sleep).

3. Sing the “Goodbye song”
The “Goodbye song” is a great way to sign off the class. Sit together in a circle and sing and clap along. You can also use a different song, especially if your students love a particular song.

Lyrics for the “Goodbye song”

Goodbye, goodbye,
See you again.
Goodbye, goodbye,
See you again.

It’s time to go,
It’s time to go,
It’s time to go,
See you next time.

Goodbye, goodbye,
See you again.
It’s time to go,
See you next time.

Gestures for the “Goodbye song”

These are quite straight forward. First time you play the song do the gestures and encourage everyone to do them with you.

Wave as you sing the “Goodbye, goodbye” parts.
Hold your hand above your eyes (as you would when you are looking into the distance and keeping the sun out of your eyes) and look at another student as you sing, “See you again”.
Tap watch (or imaginary watch) and then point to the door as you sing, “It’s time to go”.
Point towards another student as you sing, “See you next time”.

[hide_on_uk]Short sample (members get full-length song):
 [/hide_on_uk]

[hide_on_us]Short sample (members get full-length song):
 [/hide_on_us]

4. Do “Quick check” and say goodbye
Time to leave the class. Make sure everything is put away and the students have gathered their belongings. Have them line up at the door and place yourself between the door and the students. For each student check one new word or phrase, for example:

hold up an object or flashcard (such as a [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] or fruit) and ask, “What’s this?”
say an action for the student to do (e.g. “Roar like a lion”, “Jump 5 times”, etc.)
ask a question from the lesson (e.g. “How old are you?”, “Do you like bananas?”, “Can you play chess?”, etc.).
for very young students you can hold up one of the worksheets you did in the lesson and ask them to touch an object (e.g. “Touch the melon”).

When they give you the correct answer say goodbye and let them leave. If their answer is wrong, have them go back to the end of the line – they will have to try again once they reach the front!