Days of the week lesson plan

Stand-alone lesson ESL kids lesson plan

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Days of the week

In this lesson students practice saying the days of the week. Students put days in the correct order, play fun games and activities, sing a song, read a fun story and do a days writing worksheet.

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Time: 40 mins – 1 hour
Objectives: Saying the days of the week.
Structures: “What day is it today?”.
Target vocabulary: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Lesson materials

Printables:

Days of the week scramble 2 worksheet
Days of the week order worksheet
Reader worksheet
Days of the week song poster

Songs:

Days of the week

Readers:

Days of the week

Additional materials:

Days of the week vocab crossword
Days of the week vocab word search
What did Bob snack on each day? worksheet

Supplies:

[hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] pencils
calendar (preferably in English)
[hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] rectangles of cards with the days of the week written on each card (enough sets for each pair)
board with marker / chalk
device to play the song on

Notes:

Teaching days of the week can be really fun and the song accompanying this lesson really helps the students to learn the words and remember the order of the days.

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. Greetings and name tags
Greet the students by name as they enter the classroom and gesture for them to sit down. Before class prepare some blank name tags (stickers or pin-on tags). Give these out and have everyone write their names and put their tags on. If you use pin-on tags, you can keep and give out every class.

2. 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.

3. 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!). See the section “Other ideas to include in your warm” below for ideas.

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:

Ball pass questions
This is good to review questions from previous lessons. Get everybody standing in a circle.

Round 1:
Take a ball and hold it and say, “My name is (you name)”. Then throw the ball to one student and say, “What’s your name?”. Students throw the ball around randomly, saying their names and asking for names.

Round 2:
This time ask a review question, e.g. “How many tables are there?”. Then throw the ball to a student who should answer, “There are (6) tables”. Help if necessary. Then that student throws the ball to another student and asks a “How many …?” question. Continue so everyone has a go. You can have multiple rounds with different topic questions.

Play “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 to has to answer a question. If the answer is correct then that student can spin the bottle. This is a good class warm up activity (e.g. How are you? What’s your [hide_on_uk]favorite[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]favourite[/hide_on_us] food? How’s the weather today?, etc.

Play “Vocabulary basketball”
This is a fun game which reviews vocabulary from previous lessons. You will need a basket (a trash can) and 2 balls (or 2 pieces of A4 paper scrunched up into balls).

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 giving the correct answer to a question the teacher asks. This can be an actual question (e.g. What are you wearing?) or a flashcard (What’s this?). Then they go to the back of the line. At the end, the team with the most points is the winner!

Play “What’s missing?”
This is a fun review memory game – students will have to try to remember review objects from previous lessons (e.g. classroom stationery). Lay the objects out on a table for all to see. Allow the students a minute to memorize the positions of the objects. Remove an object and hold it behind your back. Say, “Open your eyes!” – the first student who can shout out the missing object wins a point for his/her team. Play for all the objects.

Finally, calculate which team has won the most points and give them a round of applause.

Play “Quiz game show”
This is a fun quiz game, like a simple version of a TV game show. Draw some circles on the board and randomly write numbers 1, 2 or 3 in each circle. These will be points.

Put students into teams. Then ask the first team to choose a number – 1 is an easy question (e.g. “Do you like bananas?”) and 3 is a difficult question (e.g. point at a clock and ask, “What time is it?”). 2 will be in between in terms of difficulty. When the question has been answered correctly, erase that number circle. Play until all the number circles are gone – the team with the most points is the winner!

Read a classroom reader again
As you progress through the lessons you will start to build up a catalog of classroom readers (see our Readers download page at https://www.eslkidstuff.com). 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.

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 that 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.
Ask about the weather. Ask, “How’s the weather today?” and have students put up their hands. Allow one weather condition per student (e.g. “It’s rainy”) and have each student come up and put a weather picture on the weather board.
Introduce more weather vocabulary. Depending on weather conditions, you can introduce more weather words (with pictures … you can get students to draw them), such as:

stormy
misty
showery

freezing
humid
frosty

icy
drizzly

New learning and practice:

1. Teach the days of the week vocabulary
Start off by looking at a calendar with everyone (an English one, if possible). Have some fun with the calendar first: ask students to point at days such as Christmas and to point out their birthdays. Ask what day their birthdays are on this year and point to the days row at the top of each month. Start to teach / elicit the English words for the days as you discuss their birthdays. Ask what day it is today.

Teach the days of the week with a calendar

2. Play “Put the days in order”
Before class, prepare some [hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] rectangles of card and write the days of the week in thick marker pen on each rectangle of card. You’ll be putting students in pairs so make enough sets for each pair. Also, if each day can be written on a different [hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] card it will help the students to quickly identify each day.

Put your students in pairs and give each pair a set of mixed up cards. By referring to the calendar, have the pairs put the days in order on the floor or table. Then get everyone to touch each card and repeat after you as you chorus the days of the week paying special attention to the fist letter of each word (e.g. “Th” for “Thursday”). Run through a few times, getting faster and faster.

Finally, get the pairs to mix up the cards and tell them they are going to race to see which pair can put their cards in order first. Say, “Ready, steady, go!” and let the students race to put the cards in order. The winner pair finished first with the correct order.

3. Play “Wall touch”
Give each pair some Blue-Tak or something to stick the cards on the wall with. Ask everyone to randomly stick the cards all over the walls around the room. Then bring everyone into the middle of the room. Shout out, “Monday!” and everyone has to race over to a Monday card and touch it. Then, “Tuesday!” and so on (in the correct order) until you make it through all the week days. Play another round, this time faster!

4. Sing the “Days of the week” song
Put one set of day cards on the board in the correct order (or use our song poster). Run through the gestures (see below) first. Then play the song and sing along doing the gestures. If this is the first time to sing the song, play it a second time.

Lyrics for “Days of the week”

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
What day is it today?
What day is it today?

Gestures for “Days of the week”

Some simple actions can be used with this song:

Stand up with both hands straight up in the air.
As the song plays each of the day words (Monday, Tuesday, etc.) slowly lower both arms, stretching right out, getting lower on each beat of the day words. So, for “Monday” both arms will be straight up at 12 o’clock, “Tuesday” your arms will be at 5-to and 5-past, … “Thursday” at quarter-to and quarter-past and finally by “Sunday” both arms are pointing down to half-past.
Then for the “What day is it today?” part, do the ‘palms of the hands up’ question gesture.

[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 classroom reader “Days of the week”
This reader follows on perfectly from the Days of the week song and helps to reinforce the weekday vocabulary. Before class, download and print off the reader “Days of the week”. As you go through each page, point to the different activities each character is doing and ask questions to see if any of your students do these activities on the same day, for example:

Teacher: (pointing on page 3) Look, what is Billy doing?
Students: Playing basketball!
Teacher: Yes, that’s right! (reading) ” I like Mondays because I play basketball after school”. How about you, Kazu, do you play basketball on Mondays?
Student (Kazu): No.
Teacher: No. So, what do you do on Mondays?
Student (Kazu): Um. I watch TV after school.
Teacher: Excellent! Well done Kazu! Does anyone play basketball? … (some students put hands up) … Mari, do you play basketball?
Student (Mari): Yes.
Teacher: Great? Do you play basketball on Mondays?
Student (Mari): No … Wednesdays.
Teacher: Good job Mari! Mari plays basketball on Wednesdays.
etc.

Continue through the reader, eliciting the days of the week vocabulary and the activities the characters do each day. Have discussions with your students about who does what on different days.

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 complete the table. Then go through the answers as a class.

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

6. Do the “Days of the week scramble 2” worksheet
To finish off this section of the lesson, give out the worksheet to everyone to do. As your students are doing the worksheets, ask questions (e.g. “What day is it?”, etc.).

Wrap up:

Assign homework: “Days of the week order” 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”.

2. Do “Quick check”
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 an item of clothing) and ask, “What’s this?”
ask a question from the lesson (e.g. “Where do you live?”, “Do you like bananas?”, “Can you play chess?”, etc.)

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!