Family lesson plan

Stand-alone lesson ESL kids lesson plan

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Family

In this lesson students practice by talking about different members of the family. Students play a fun family photos game, make a family tree poster, make and play with finger puppets, sing a song and read a funny story.

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Time: 40 mins – 1 hour
Objectives: Talking about different members of the family.
Structures: “Who is this?”, “How are you?”, “I’m fine thank you”, “See you soon”.
Target vocabulary: father, mother, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, family.

Lesson materials

Printables:

Finger family craft (for The family song) worksheet
My family worksheet
The family song song poster

Songs:

The family song

Readers:

The monster family

Additional materials:

Family vocab crossword
Family vocab word search
Family members worksheet

Supplies:

[hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] crayons / pencils
photos of you and your family (or magazine cut outs of people)
construction paper / card (one sheet per student)
tape / glue
scissors
a timer (set to 1 minute)
board with chalk / markers
device to play the song on

Notes:

This is a great lesson to younger students as they completely understand the concept of family. The materials include finger puppets for the lesson activities.

IMPORTANT: if possible, ask parents before class to arrange for their kids to bring in family photos – parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, themselves. Also, bring in a few family photos of your own.

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):
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[hide_on_us]Short sample (members get full-length song):
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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. Do “Teacher’s family photos time” activity
If you can bring in photos of your family, this is a great activity to do. Also, try to encourage your students to bring in photos of their family – you’ll need to arrange this with the parents before the lesson. If you can’t bring in photos, see the alternative below.

Draw 7 squares on the top of your board in a row (see image below). Hold up a photo of yourself and ask, “Who is this?”. Elicit that it is you, stick the photo inside the middle square and write your name under the photo.

Next take out another photo (e.g. your father) and again ask, “Who is this?”. Elicit and teach the family vocabulary and stick the photo in one of the squares and write the word (e.g. “father”) under the photo. Do for all of the following: father, mother, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother – you may not have some of these family members, but for the sake of this lesson, use photos of friends, etc., and pretend they are your brother, grandmother, etc.

Your students will really enjoy seeing your family photos and will probably ask questions – feel free to extend the information you give on your family members, especially if it reviews previous lessons, such as ages and jobs. Also, you can practice/review describing vocabulary (e.g. blond hair, big eyes, etc.).

Alternative:

If you can’t bring in family photos: instead of using your family photos, cut out pictures of people from magazines and pretend they are your family members. Younger kids will generally believe you (and may even be quite impressed!).

2. Do “Students’ family photos time” activity
If your students have brought in photos of themselves and their families, this is a great activity to do. If not, go to step 3.

On the board, under the row of 7 photos of your family you are going to place photos from each of the students’ families. First, hold up the photos of the students in your class and elicit who they are – each time, stick their photo in the middle column and write their names underneath.

Next, you are going to play a guessing game – hold up a photo of one of your student’s family members (e.g. Hugo’s sister) and get everyone to guess whose family the person belongs to. Elicit family vocabulary (e.g. “It’s Hugo’s sister”) and place the photo on the board in the correct place (e.g., for Hugo’s sister, it would go in the row of Hugo’s photo and in the sister column).

Keep holding up randomly selected photos of your students’ family members and placing on the board until your board is full of family photos.

3. Make “My family tree” posters
Give out a piece of [hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] construction paper / card to each student. They are each going to make a family tree poster of their family. Begin by demonstrating the activity – with a green and brown crayon/pen draw a large tree, filling up the whole piece of paper. At the top write in large letters “My family”. Then, either stick your photos family photos onto the tree or draw pictures of your family (grandparents at the top, next your parents and you and your siblings at the bottom). Finally, under each family member photo/picture write the vocabulary (grandfather, mother, etc.).

Now get your students to do the same. If they brought in photos they can use them on their poster – if not, encourage them to draw pictures of their family members. Students can copy the words from your poster (display it clearly).

Finally, have each student pin their poster to the walls of the classroom. Ask each student questions (e.g. Is that you mother? What is your brother’s name? How old is your sister?).

Note:

Depending on the level of your students you can have them write more information about their family members on the poster (e.g. names, ages, jobs, etc.). Students can even draw pictures of their pets.

4. Make and play with finger puppets
For the song we are going to use finger puppets (use the “Finger family craft” sheet). Before class, print and cut out the finger puppets. We have [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] and black & white versions of the craft sheet – if using the black & white version, have your students [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] in the puppets before starting the song. Then attach the puppets to each students’ fingers by taping the straps around the finger – 3 puppets on each hand.

Next, check everyone understands which puppet is which – say, “Everybody wiggle grandfather” – make sure you are wearing your finger puppets as well so you can demonstrate. Go through each puppet, wiggling fingers. Then play a quick game: say, “Wiggle the sister” and everyone has to quickly wiggle the right one. Do for a few rounds until everyone has got the hang of it.

5. Sing “The family song”
Play the song and sing along – wiggling the correct puppet for each verse (e.g. verse 1 is “father”). If everyone enjoyed the song, play it once more.

Lyrics for “The family song”

Verse 1:
Hello father, Hello father,
How are you? How are you?
I’m fine thank you, I’m fine thank you,
See you soon, See you soon.

Verse 2:
Hello mother, Hello mother,
How are you? How are you?
I’m fine thank you, I’m fine thank you,
See you soon, See you soon.

Verse 3:
Hello brother, Hello brother,
How are you? How are you?
I’m fine thank you, I’m fine thank you,
See you soon, See you soon.

Verse 4:
Hello sister, Hello sister,
How are you? How are you?
I’m fine thank you, I’m fine thank you,
See you soon, See you soon.

Verse 5:
Hello grandfather, Hello grandfather,
How are you? How are you?
I’m fine thank you, I’m fine thank you,
See you soon, See you soon.

Verse 6:
Hello grandmother, Hello grandmother,
How are you? How are you?
I’m fine thank you, I’m fine thank you,
See you soon, See you soon.

Verse 7:
Hello family, Hello family,
How are you? How are you?
I’m fine thank you, I’m fine thank you,
See you soon, See you soon.

Gestures for “The family song”

For this song students use finger puppets – cut out the puppets from the “Finger family craft” sheet:

before the song, help everyone to put on the puppets – there are 6 puppets altogether, 3 on each hand.
as the song plays, students wiggle the puppet for that particular verse (e.g. in Verse 1 it is “father”) and sing along.
for the last verse (family) students wiggle all of their finger puppets

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

6. Play “Finger puppet conversations”
By now, everyone should have the idea of the structures from the song, so we are going to have some fun role-plays with the finger puppets. First model with one student. Hold up one finger puppet (e.g. mother) and get the other student to hold up one finger (e.g. grandfather). Role-play a fun conversation, for example:

T: Hello grandfather.
S: Hello mother.
T: How are you?
S: I’m fine, thank you. How are you?
T: I’m fine, thank you. See you soon.
S: See you soon.

Then you can change finger puppets and do the conversation again. Depending on level, you can also throw in a few more questions, such as, “What’s your name?”, “How old are you?”, “Where do you live?”, etc.

Now the class can role-play. Put everyone into pairs and set a timer to one minute. Shout, “Start!” and the pairs should role-play with different puppets until the timer goes off. Then shout, “Change partners!” and everyone finds a new partner for another one-minute conversation. Keep going for a few rounds.

7. Read classroom reader “The monster family”
We’ll end the lesson with a fun story. Before class, download and print off the reader “The monster family”. You may have already used this reader in the Parts of the body lesson – if so, this will be a good review (kids love returning to [hide_on_uk]favorite[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]favourite[/hide_on_us] stories). As you go through each page, point to the pictures, elicit each key body word, and have your students guess which family member each monster is, for example:

Teacher: Which family member is this? (pointing at the monster on page 2)
Students: Sister?
Teacher: Yes, right! It’s Little Monster’s sister. And what are these?
Students: Shoulders!
Teacher: Yes, big shoulders! Everyone, touch your shoulders (touching shoulders).
Students: (Touching shoulders) Shoulders!
Teacher: What [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] are her shoulders?
Students: Pink!
Teacher: Right! (Reading) This is my sister. She has big shoulders.
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 touch and say the parts of the body in the story.

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

Wrap up:

Assign homework: “My family” 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”

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):
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[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!