Classroom objects lesson plan

Stand-alone lesson ESL kids lesson plan

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Classroom objects

In this lesson students learn to identify and say 5 different objects in the classroom. Students practice naming things in their classroom, play fun games and activities and do a worksheet activity.

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Age: 3-7 years
Time: 40 mins – 1 hour
Objectives: Identifying and saying 5 different objects in the classroom.
Structures: “What’s this?” “What [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] is this?”.
Target vocabulary: table, chair, bookcase, door, window.

Lesson materials

Flashcards:

table, chair, bookcase, door, window.

Printables:

[hide_on_uk]Color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Colour[/hide_on_us] the room 2 worksheet
Classroom objects count 2 worksheet
Reader worksheet

Readers:

Find me in the classroom

Additional materials:

Classroom objects vocab crossword
Classroom objects vocab word search
Spell the classroom objects worksheet

Supplies:

[hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] crayons / pencils
Blu-Tack
small objects (such as cuddly toys)
a [hide_on_uk]trash can[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]wastepaper basket[/hide_on_us]
cushions (1 per student)

Notes:

This lesson allows your students to be able to identify some important classroom objects. This is important as it will help them to speak about their environment.

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):
<br /> [/hide_on_uk]

[hide_on_us]Short sample (members get full-length song):
<br /> [/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. Introduce the vocabulary
Today your students are going to learn the words: table, chair, bookcase, door, window. Before class, print off enough flashcard pictures of each of these words for each student in your class as well as yourself (so if you have 8 students you will need 9 table flashcards, 9 chair flashcards, etc.).

Start off by getting everyone sitting on the floor in front of you. Hold up the table flashcard. Proceed as follows:

Introduce the classroom vocabulary with flashcards

Teacher: What’s this? It’s a table. Repeat “table”.
Students: “Table” (repeat 3 times)
Teacher: Can you see a table in the classroom? Point to the table.
Students: (Point to tables)
Teacher: Yes! Good job!

Lay the flashcard on the floor. Then do the same for the other 4 flashcards.

Next give each student the same 5 flashcards and have them lay the cards out in front of them. Touch one of your cards (e.g. door) whilst saying the word and have your students touch and repeat on their cards. Go through all of the cards.

2. Play “Stick the flashcards onto the classroom objects”
Give each student a ball of Blue-Tack. Everyone will instantly want to play with it – allow a couple of minutes to play (encourage them to mould objects, such as fruit, etc.).

Then bring the focus of the class back to yourself and demonstrate the activity: hold up the door flashcard, pull off a bit of Blu-Tack and stick it to the back of the card. Then walk over to a door in the classroom and stick the card to the door. Say, “Door” as you do so. Hold up the next flashcard and encourage students to point to the object (act as if you have no idea where it is) then walk over and stick the card to the object, again saying the name. Do this for all 5 flashcards.

Now your students can do the same thing. Teacher says an object (e.g. “table”) and all of the students have to stick their flashcards onto the object, whilst saying the word. Do for all 5 objects.

3. Play “Retrieve the flashcards from the classroom objects”
Now that all of the flashcards are on objects in the classroom, we can bring them back. To do this, the teacher can give individual instructions to students to go and get a different object and place in front of them. Get everyone up and retrieving different cards at the same time, for example:

Teacher: Miki, bring back the door card, please
(Miki stands up and goes towards the door)
Teacher: Jose, bring back the bookcase flashcard, please
(Jose stands up and goes towards the bookcase)
etc.

This should be fun and a little hectic. When everyone has collected the items and sat down with the flashcards in front of them the activity is over.

4. Play “Knock knock”
Collect up the flashcards. Tell everyone to close their eyes. Walk up to one of the objects (e.g. the window) and knock twice on it. Encourage the students to shout out what they think you are knocking on. Each time they can open their eyes to check.

Then pair up your students and get them to play “Knock knock” together.

5. Play “Classroom objects” touch
Have everyone stand up in the middle of the classroom. Teacher shouts out a word (e.g. “Touch the door!”) and everyone must run to the door and touch it. This should be a quick and exciting game.

After a few rounds, feel free to add other words that have been covered in previous lessons.

6. Play “Hide and find”
This is a really fun game. First demonstrate: take a small object (I always use a small koala toy) and tell everyone to close their eyes. Hide it in or near one of the classroom objects (e.g. under a table, behind a door, next to a window, in a bookcase, on a chair). Tell everyone to open their eyes. Show that the koala is now gone and is hiding somewhere.

Ask for a volunteer to stand up and find the koala – if help is needed say it is hiding somewhere near one of the 5 classroom objects. When the student finds the koala give a big round of applause and elicit the classroom object the koala was hidden in or near.

Now that everyone understands the game, pair up all of the students and give each pair a small object to hide. Student A of each pair will hide the object while Student B closes their eyes. Let students change roles a few times.

7. Do the “[hide_on_uk]Color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Colour[/hide_on_us] the room 2” worksheet
Give out the worksheets and have each student [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] them in. As students are working away, circulate and ask questions (e.g. What’s this? What [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] is this?). When finished, get each student to show the class their work, ask a question (e.g. what color is the bookcase?) and give a round of applause.

8. Read classroom reader “Find me in the classroom”
By this point your students will have had a good amount of practice identifying the key vocabulary so let’s have some fun with a story which incorporates the classroom vocabulary. Before class, download and print off the reader “Find me in the classroom”. As you go through each page, point to the key vocabulary in each picture and elicit the words. Then get your students to have fun searching for and finding the [hide_on_uk]ladybug[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]ladybird[/hide_on_us] hiding in the classroom, for example:

Teacher: (reading from page 1) “Hello, I’m Liana [hide_on_uk]Ladybug[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Ladybird[/hide_on_us].” … Look, she’s in a classroom. What’s this (points at the door)?
Students: Door!
Teacher: Yes, that’s right. And what [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] is it?
Students: Red!
Teacher: Yes, it’s a red door!

(teacher elicits the other classroom objects)

Teacher: (reading from page 1) “I’m going to hide” … Let’s look … (turns to page 2) … Where is Liana [hide_on_uk]Ladybug[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Ladybird[/hide_on_us]
Students: (pointing) Chair!
Teacher: Oh yes, there she is – under the chair! Repeat “Under the chair”.
Students: Under the chair.
etc.

Continue through the story, asking where the [hide_on_uk]ladybug[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]ladybird[/hide_on_us] is hiding. Get the students really involved in the story by asking lots of questions (e.g. the [hide_on_uk]colors[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colours[/hide_on_us] and where the other insects are) and even ask yes/no questions about where the [hide_on_uk]ladybug[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]ladybird[/hide_on_us] is hiding (making mistakes, of course), for example:

Teacher: (reading from page 4) “Where am I? Can you find me?” … Let’s see, is this Liana [hide_on_uk]Ladybug[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Ladybird[/hide_on_us]? (points at the caterpillar).
Students: No!
Teacher: No? Well, is she here, on the table? (pointing at the beetle)
Students: No!
Teacher: Well, where is she?
Students: Bookcase! (pointing)
Teacher: (Looking more closely). Oh, yes! Well done! She’s on the bookcase! Repeat “On the bookcase”
etc.

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 different places the ladybug hides. Then go through the answers as a class.

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

9. Play “Vocabulary basketball”
Let’s finish with a fun game which will review vocabulary from this lesson as well as previous lessons. You will need a basket (a [hide_on_uk]trash can[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]wastepaper basket[/hide_on_us]) and 2 balls (or 2 pieces of A4 paper scrunched up into a ball). Also, have flashcards for the vocabulary from this lesson as well as previous lessons – shuffle them well.

Form 2 teams and line them up so that two players from each team are facing the front with the basket in front of them. Let both players throw their ball – if they get their ball into the basket they can try and win a point by saying the correct word of the flashcard you hold up. Then they go to the back of the line. Play until all of the flashcards have been answered correctly – the team with the most points is the winner!

Wrap up:

Assign homework: “Classroom objects count 2 worksheet” worksheet

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”