Describing people 2 lesson plan

“I’m medium height”

Lesson 24 Level 3 Age 7-9

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Lesson 24

Describing people 2

In this lesson students continue to describe people using some common adjectives. They also play some fun describing games, read a fun story and take part in a class descriptions survey.

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Age: 7-9 years
Time: 1 hour – 1 hour 20 mins
Objectives: Describing people using adjectives. Saying birthday dates with ordinal numbers.
Structures: “What does s/he look like?”, “Tell me all about your friend”, “[I/He/She] [am/is/[hide_on_uk]have[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]have got[/hide_on_us]/[hide_on_uk]has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]has got[/hide_on_us]] [long hair]”, “[He/She] is great!”.
New vocabulary: medium height, medium length (hair).
Review vocabulary: tall, short, long hair, short hair, brown eyes, blue eyes, blonde hair, black hair, (best) friend, ordinal numbers 1st ~ 31st.

Lesson materials

Printables:

Describing people handout 1 – height (1 copy only)
Describing people handout 2 – hair length (1 copy only)
Describe some more people (1 per pair of students)
Describe your friend class survey
The clever prince reader worksheet
Describe your family worksheet

Readers:

The clever prince

Supplies:

name tags for each student
board with markers / chalk
weather board (from previous class)
tape measure or ruler
lots of magazine pictures of people

Notes:

In this lesson students continue to practice describing people using common adjectives. Students take part in a class descriptions survey, read a fun story and play games where they describe people.

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”
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. “What time do you get up?”). 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 1-150 – write numbers on the board and ask what they are.
Likes & dislikes for food and drink – “Do you like milk?”, “Yes, I do / No, I don’t”.
Clothes – “What are you wearing?”. “What do you wear on rainy days?”, etc.
Days of the week – say in the correct order.
Daily routines – hold up a flashcard with a daily routine and ask, “What is this?”, then “What time do you get up?”.
Ability – hold up a flashcard and ask, “Can you …?” and “Can your (mother) …?” questions.
Parts of the body – say, “Touch your (shoulders)” and the student touches the correct body part.
Possessions – ask, “[hide_on_uk]Do you have[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Have you got[/hide_on_us] (a cat, a tablet, a bicycle, etc.)?”.
Seasons – ask, “What’s your [hide_on_uk]favorite[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]favourite[/hide_on_us] season?”.

3. Homework check
Check each students’ homework worksheet and ask them to describe one of the characters on 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.

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. Say when your birthday is
Have everyone take out their handout “Dates for birthdays” from the last lesson. Chorus the ordinal numbers quickly … we’ll work on these over the next few lessons, getting used to saying them.

Write on the top of the board, “When is your birthday?” and have your students ask you the question. Point to your birthday date and say when your birthday is, e.g. “My birthday is the (16th) of (May)”. Write this sentence on the board.

Next, write on the board, “What did you get for your birthday?”
Have the students ask you and say/write your answer (e.g. “I got a camara for my birthday”).

Finally, go around the class asking each student, the 2 questions on the board.

Say when your birthday is board questions and answers

New learning and practice:

1. Practice describing people 1: height
Today we’ll introduce the word “medium”. Before class print out the “Describing people handouts” 1 and 2. We’ll start with “Describing people handout 1 – height”. Pin the handout to the board.

Use the images of the girls to elicit the adjectives for “tall” and “short”. You can explain that (approx.) under 140cm is short and over 170cm is tall. Then point to the girl in the middle (Kerubo) and teach/chorus “medium height”.

Go around the class and have everyone say their height adjective (e.g. “I am short”). As they do, write sample sentences on the board, making sure to include all three adjectives for height. You can also ask for their height in centimeters as well for extra number practice.

2. Practice describing people 2: hair length
Next, we’ll use “Describing people handout 2 – hair length” to teach “medium” for hair length.

Again, elicit “short hair” and “long hair”. For the middle boy, teach/chorus “medium length hair”.

Go around the class and have everyone say their hair length adjective (e.g. “I [hide_on_uk]have[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]have got[/hide_on_us] long hair”). As they do, write sample sentences on the board, making sure to include all three adjectives for hair length.

If you have a tape measure or ruler you can measure the length of each person’s hair – this is a lot of fun! You can find our who has the longest and shortest hair in the class.

3. Describe some more people
Before class, print out the “Describe some more people” handout (in [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us], if possible) – enough for each pair of students in your class. Put students into pairs and give the handout to each pair. Students are going to discuss the people in the picture and describe them.

On the board help students give you the following for the first person:

His/Her name is (Maria).
He/She’s (43) years old.
He/She is (tall).
He/She [hide_on_uk]has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]has got[/hide_on_us] (brown) hair.
He/She [hide_on_uk]has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]has got[/hide_on_us] (short) hair.

Then put students in pairs. Each person takes turns in using the model sentences on the board to describe the people. Finally, check as a class.

Then make new pairs. This time students describe people without saying the names. Their partner has to guess who it is.

4. Do the “Describe your friend class survey” worksheet
This will give your students the chance to use the lesson structures. Give out the class survey worksheet. Each student should work on their own for a few minutes looking at their classmates and filling in the table about 6 of their friends in the class. Whilst they are doing this, circulate and check and ask questions.

Finally, once everyone has finished, ask each student to describe some of their friends: Ask, “Tell me about your friend”, “What does he / she look like?”. As each student describes, their classmates need to guess who it is.

Finally, put students in pairs to practice asking about their classmates.

Additional activity: Have your students ask about and describe family members (e.g. brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, etc.).

5. Read classroom reader “The clever prince”
Before class, download and print off the reader “The clever prince” and enough reader worksheets for each student. First, give each student a worksheet and have pairs read the descriptions of the characters from the story and draw what they think they will look like. Then as you read through the story students can check how close their drawings are to the character pictures.

As you go through each page, point to the pictures, elicit adjectives to describe the characters in the story:

Teacher: (pointing to the picture of the princess on page 1) Who is this?
Students: A princess?
Teacher: Yes, that’s right! And what does she look like? (elicit description adjectives)
Students: [hide_on_uk]She has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]She’s got[/hide_on_us] long, blond hair.
Teacher: Yes! And she is very beautiful, isn’t she?
Students: Yes!

Get the students really involved in the story by asking lots of questions such as what the animals (real and fictional) are and what everyone thinks the prince should do to rescue the princess.

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

6. 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)

7. Play “Guess who?”
For this activity, you’ll need lots of magazine pictures of people. Try and get lots of different types of people pictures, with different [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] eyes and hair. The more pictures you can find and cut-out before class the better (Note: This is a great resource to have for future lessons, as people pictures can be used in many different ways).

In class, lay out all of pictures on the floor or on a large table. Start by saying, “My friend [hide_on_uk]has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]has got[/hide_on_us] (short, brown) hair, he is (tall) and [hide_on_uk]he has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]he’s got[/hide_on_us] (green) eyes”. Everyone should try and guess which picture you are describing. You can also give additional clues (clothes, etc.). The student who guesses correctly can then have a go describing someone.

Now that everyone has got the idea of the game, put students into small groups and have them play the game together. Whilst they are playing, monitor, help and encourage the use of the lesson structures.

Wrap up:

1. Assign homework: “Describe your family”
Hold up the homework worksheet and model what to do – draw a picture of your father and fill in the blanks with descriptions. Point out to your students that the last description is for themselves!

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

2. 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 a magazine people picture from the last activity and say, “Tell me about this person”, and have them describe that person (e.g. “She is 24 years old, she [hide_on_uk]has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]has got[/hide_on_us] medium length, black hair, etc.”).

When they give you a suitable 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!