Ability and family 1 lesson plan

“Can you swim?”

Lesson 14 Level 3 Age 7-9

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Lesson 14

Ability and family 1

In this lesson students learn to say what they can and can’t do for various exercises and actions using the modal verb “can”. They also describe their parents’ abilities. Students also play fun games, read a story and conduct an ability questionnaire.

Members get accompanying worksheets, homework sheet, flashcards and reader.

This is a full course lesson plan.

Materials:

Our lesson plans are FREE!

Sign up for accompanying:

✔ worksheets
✔ homework sheets
✔ craft sheets
✔ flashcards
✔ PowerPoint lessons & multimedia
✔ song downloads & videos
✔ classroom readers & videos

Click to see lesson details, materials and supplies

Age: 7-9 years
Time: 1 hour – 1 hour 20 mins
Objectives: Asking about and saying what you can and can’t do for various exercises and actions. Also, explaining your parents’ abilities.
Structures: “Can [you/he/she] [ride a bike]?”, “Yes, [I/he/she] can”, “No, [I/he/she] can’t”, “[I/he/she] can swim”, “[I/he/she] can’t cook”.
New vocabulary: jump, run, swim, hop, turn around, kick, fly, ride a bike, cook, ski, sing, dance, mother, father.
Review vocabulary: telling the time, daily routines vocab, in the [morning/afternoon/evening], at night.

Lesson materials

Flashcards:

Times of the day flashcards (morning, afternoon, evening, night)
Daily routines (wake up, get up, eat breakfast, go to school, start school, eat lunch, leave school, arrive home, watch TV, eat dinner, do homework, go to bed)
Exercise and actions flashcards (jump, run, swim, hop, kick, turn around, fly, ride a bike, cook, ski, sing and dance)

Printables:

Can you …? 1 worksheet
I can reader worksheet
My mother and father worksheet
What can you do? worksheet

Readers:

I can

Supplies:

name tags for each student
board with markers / chalk
weather board (from previous class)
a clock (or your clock craft from lesson 10)
photos of your mother and father (at least one printed photo of each to stick on the board – more photos, either printed or on your phone, for fun)

Notes:

In this lesson students ask and talk about abilities using the modal verb “can”. They ask their teacher and classmates questions about what they can and can’t do as well say what their mothers and fathers can do.

Lesson procedure:

Warm up and maintenance:

1. Greetings and name tags
Greet the students 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. Play “Quiz game show”
Let’s start with 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!

Questions on the following topics can be asked:

Numbers 1-30 – hold up a number card and ask, “What number is this?”.
Likes & dislikes for food and drink – “Do you like milk?”, “Yes, I do / No, I don’t”.
Clothes – “What are you wearing?”, “I’m wearing a t-shirt and jeans”.
Clothes and weather – “What do you wear on rainy days?”, “I wear a coat and boots”.
Days of the week – say all the days in the correct order.
Time – hold up a clock and ask, “What time is it?”.
Daily routines – hold up a flashcard with a daily routine and ask, “What is this?”, then “What time do you get up?”.

3. Homework check
Check each student’s homework that you set in the last lesson. Ask each student some questions about their homework worksheet by asking about daily routines on their wordsearch sheet, e.g. “What’s this?” (pointing to the picture of ‘go to school’), then ask, “What time do you go to school?”. 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.

4. Talk about the weather using the “Weather board”
Use the weather board that you created in the previous class. 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.

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

5. Review times
Hold up a clock (or your craft clock from the previous lesson). Set it at 4 o’clock and ask, “What time is it?” and elicit, “It’s 4 o’clock”. Next, move the minute hand to 5 mins and elicit, “It’s 5 [hide_on_uk]after[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]past[/hide_on_us] 4”. Continue around the clock eliciting the times. Finally, put students into pairs and have them draw clock times for their partner to say.

6. Play “Times [hide_on_uk]tic-tac-toe[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]noughts and crosses[/hide_on_us]”
Draw a [hide_on_uk]tic-tac-toe[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]noughts and crosses”[/hide_on_us] grid on the board. Write the letters A-I in the corner of each of the cells – this makes it easy for your students to say which cell they want you to draw the “O”s and “X”s in. Split the class into 2 teams.

If everyone knows how to play “[hide_on_uk]tic-tac-toe[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]noughts and crosses”[/hide_on_us], play a couple of games on the blank grid so everyone gets the idea – a student from each team can say where to place the X or O (saying the letter of an empty cell, taking turns as they go).

If any student doesn’t know how to play “[hide_on_uk]tic-tac-toe[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]noughts and crosses”[/hide_on_us], explain on the board how to play. Then follow the step above.

Next, draw a clock in each cell, each showing a random time. It is a good idea to draw these on card before class so you can simply stick them onto the board – you’ll need 9 clocks in total for the 9 cells. Your board will end up looking something like this:

A student from the first team chooses a cell (by saying the cell letter) and then must say the time of the clock in that cell. If the time is correct, the team wins the cell and can put a “O” or “X” in it. If they don’t say the time perfectly, their turn is over and the other team can take a turn.

Keep playing until the game is won. If everyone enjoyed the game, feel free to play again!

7. Play “Times of the day”
Next, we’ll review saying when your students do different daily routines. Start by showing each of the 4 times of the day flashcards and eliciting the phrases in the [morning / afternoon / evening] and at night. Stick each card to the top of the board.

Next, stick the daily routines flashcards randomly around the board, under the times of the day flashcards.
Put students into teams of 2 or 3. Point to a picture (e.g. eat dinner) and have students race to slap their desk – the fastest says a sentence (e.g. “I eat dinner at 6 o’clock in the evening”). A correct answer wins a point for their team.

Play until all pictures have been made into sentences. The team with the most points is the winner!

New learning and practice:

1. Introduce exercise vocabulary and play “Teacher says”
Before class, prepare flashcards of the exercise actions we are going to learn (jump, run, swim, hop, kick, turn around). Have all your students stand up and pull out the first flashcard (e.g. “Jump”). Get the students to do the action as soon as you reveal the card.

Shout out the word as you are all doing the action and encourage everyone to shout the word as well. Do this for all 6 cards.

Finally, play “Teacher says”. This is the game “Simon Says” but using the word “teacher”, or your name, instead. Go straight into the game (no explanations necessary) by saying “Teacher says (jump)”. Do the action and make sure everyone else follows along. Do a few more “run, turn around, swim, etc.“.

Then at some point give a command without the “Teacher says” part (e.g. “Jump!”). First time round, everyone will jump, so make it very clear that they shouldn’t do this when you don’t say “Teacher says”. After a while your students will get the hang of it. Play the game faster and faster. When a student makes a mistake, they have to sit the rest of the game out. The last student standing is the winner.

2. Teach “Can you ..?”, “Yes, I can / No, I can’t”, “I can …”
Take out 6 more action flashcards: fly, ride a bike, cook, ski, sing and dance. Sit everyone down. Pull out the “jump” flashcard. Say, “I can jump” – point to yourself and nod your head. Then jump and say, “I can jump”. Do the same for another flashcard (e.g. run).

Then pull out the “fly” flashcard. Look surprised and shake your head, saying “No, I can’t fly”. Motion trying to fly but falling on the ground. You can also ask some students, “Can you fly?” – some are bound to say “Yes”, but look shocked and say “No. No, I don’t think so.”.

Next do a few more actions (turn around, hop) and then pull out the “ride a bike” flashcard. Again, say “I can’t ride a bike” and motion trying to but falling off. Go through the remaining flashcards including the new ones.

Now, show a flashcard (e.g. hop) and ask the class, “Can you hop?”. Write the question on the board. Go around the class – each student replies, “Yes, I can. I can hop.” and show you how. Write this on the board.

Do this with all the flashcards – when someone says they can’t do something (e.g. ride a bike, swim and especially fly!) teach and write the negative sentence on the board (e.g. “No, I can’t. I can’t fly”).

3. Do the “Can you …? 1” worksheet
Hold up the worksheet and model what to do – put circles or crosses in the boxes for the things you can (O) or can’t (X) do. Then write the sentences below each picture. As students are doing their worksheets, circulate and help out with mistakes.

Now put your students into pairs. Student A points to one of the pictures on the worksheet and asks a “Can you” question, for example, “Can you ride a bike?”. Student B answers yes or no according to their ability (e.g. Yes, I can. I can ride a bike”).

Do a final check by asking a few students questions from their worksheets.

4. Read classroom reader “I can”
Before class, download and print off the reader “I can” from our website. As you go through each page, point to the pictures and elicit the animals. Then have your students guess what each animal can do, for example:

Teacher: What is this? (pointing on page 1)
Students: It’s a rabbit.
Teacher: (Reading) “Hello. I am a rabbit“. Good! What can a rabbit do? Can it fly?
Students: No! Jump!
Teacher: Ok, let’s check. (Reading on page 2) “I can jump”.
Yes, good job!
etc.

Get the students really involved in the story by asking lots of questions about the abilities of the animals. After reading the story, give out a reader worksheet to each student and have everyone match the animals to the things they can do and write the words. Then go through the answers as a class.

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

5. Read and write time
This segment can be part of all your lessons. Spend 10 to 15 minutes building up your students’ writing and reading skills. You’ll need to assess your students’ reading/writing level and then choose to start at one of the following stages:

Reading and writing activities by level:

1. Beginners: students cannot read or write the alphabet.
Each lesson introduce 3 lower-case letters of the alphabet (first lesson will be a, b, c). Use flashcards to do this. Play alphabet games and do printing worksheets.
» See our ‘Alphabet a-z (lowercase)’ mini-lesson plans for full details.

2. Early starters: students have experience with the alphabet but need phonics practice.
Each lesson introduce 5 lower-case letters of the alphabet (first lesson will be a, b, c, d, e). Use flashcards to do this. Start by working on the sounds of the letters and then move onto letter clusters (e.g. sh, ee, etc).
» See our ‘Alphabet’ and ‘Letter clusters’ mini-lesson plans for full details.

3. Early readers.
Work on reading and writing simple sentences with lots of practice activities.
» See our ‘Early reading’ mini-lesson plans for full details. (click on “Early reading” tab)

4. Elementary readers: students can read and write simple sentences well.
Work on reading and writing short texts and stories.
» See our ‘Reading short texts’ mini-lessons for full details. (click on “Reading short texts” tab)

6. Introduce your mother and father
Before class, prepare a photo each of your mother and father. You can also show some more photos on your phone (your students will be very interested!), but it’s good to have a print-out to put on your board. Hold up the picture of your father and say, “This is my father. His name is …”. Stick the photo on the board and write underneath:

This is my father.
His name is …

Chorus the sentences x2.

Next, do the same for your mother, so you have both photos on the board with sentences underneath. After that, hold up the “swim” flashcard and put it on the board. Point at your father and ask, “Can my father swim?” and get everyone to guess. Then reveal the answer (E.g. “He can swim”) and write this on the board under his photo. Then do the same for your mother.

Continue for the flashcards ride a bike, cook, ski, sing, dance. Make sure you have some “can’t” sentences on the board. Chorus each sentence as you write it on the board. You will end up with 6 “can/can’t” sentences for both of your parents.

Finally, do a check by asking students questions about your parents, e.g.:

Teacher: Can my mother cook?
Student: Yes, she can. She can cook.

7. Do the “My mother and father” worksheet
Now your students are going to introduce their mothers and fathers. Give out the worksheet and model what to do – draw a picture of your mother and father and write sentences under their pictures.

Have your students work on their sheets – as they do go around the class, helping out with spelling and asking lots of questions about their parents.

When everyone has finished, have students stand up and introduce their parents to the class – saying their names and what they can and can’t do. For a bit of fun, you can ask extra questions as well (e.g. “Can your mother fly?”).

Wrap up:

1. Assign homework: “What can you do?”
Hold up the homework worksheet and model writing the verbs and circling the answers.

Give out the worksheets and say, “Put your homework in your bags”.

2. Ask everyone to bring family photos to the next lesson
Next lesson you and your students will continue to talk about your family. To make things more fun, ask everybody to bring in photos of the following family members (if possible):

mother
father
brothers
sisters
grandmothers
grandfathers
pets (dogs, cats, hamsters, etc.)

Make sure everyone knows to bring printed photos and not photos on their phones or tablets.

It might be a good idea to draft a note for students to give to their parents asking for this.

3. 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 hold up an action flashcard from today’s lesson and ask an ability question, e.g. “Can you ride a bike” – make sure a full answer is given (e.g. “Yes, I can. I can ride a bike”).

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!