Teaching Favorites to ESL kids

How to teach favorites to kids learning English?

Below are a few useful teaching points and ideas taken from our free Favorites and Asking Why lesson plan.

Teaching points / tips

1. Before teaching favorites, make sure students are familiar with saying their likes and dislikes (I like ~, I don’t like ~”).

2. Elicit 8 different categories and write them on different parts of the board, so each part of the board has a category, such as:

Next, crumple up a piece of paper into a ball. Stand a few paces from the board and throw it at the board. The category that the ball hits (or goes nearest to) is the one you are going to talk about. Start by giving some examples of that category, e.g.

“Food. Hmm. Hamburgers … pizza … cabbage …”

Then smile and say “But … my favorite food is ice cream!” (show by smiling and smacking your lips).

Next, go around the class asking what everyone’s favorite food is.

Then, pull a sad face and say “My least favorite food is cabbage” (show by pulling a disgusted face). Go around the class asking what everyone’s least favorite food is.

On the board write the following:

What / Who is your (least) favorite …?
My (least) favorite … is …

Get a student to volunteer and throw a ball at the board. Then  ask “What/Who is your favorite …?” and “What/Who is your least favorite …?” and have the student reply using the structures on the board. For example:

Teacher: (the student’s ball has hit “singer”) Who is your favorite singer?
Student: My favorite singer is Justin Bieber.
Teacher: Good! And who is your least favorite singer?
Student: My least favorite singer is Madonna.

Finally, pair up students, and get everyone to come up to the board – each pair needs a crumpled up paper ball. Pairs take turns throwing the ball and asking/answering questions about their favorites. If you have a lot of students this might be a bit chaotic with balls flying all over the place, but it will be fun!

3. Class survey – put students into pairs and get them to prepare a class survey based on the categories on the board.  Then have students mingle and ask their survey questions.  Finish by asking pairs for the most interesting survey results.