Describing things 1 lesson plan

“A long snake”

Lesson 25 Level 3 Age 7-9

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Lesson 25

Describing things 1

In this lesson students use common adjectives to describe animals and objects and make comparisons. They also play adjective games, listen to a fun song and take part in an adjectives survey.

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Age: 7-9 years
Time: 1 hour – 1 hour 20 mins
Objectives: Describing things and animals with common adjectives.
Structures: “Let’s look at~”, “What’s that?”, “It’s a/an (adjective)+(noun)“, “Can you …?”, “That’s great / ok / not so good”.
New vocabulary: big / small, long / short, fat / thin, fast / slow, strong / weak.
Review vocabulary: tall, short, medium height, long hair, short hair, medium length hair, (brown) eyes, (blonde) hair, ordinal numbers 1st ~ 31st.

Lesson materials

Printables:

Let’s look at the animals song worksheet
Animal adjectives write worksheet
Find someone who (descriptions) worksheet
Adjectives – draw the opposites worksheet

Songs:

Let’s look at the animals

Supplies:

name tags for each student
board with markers / chalk
weather board (from previous class)
lots of magazine pictures of people
sheets of blank paper (1 per student)

Notes:

In this lesson students practice using common adjectives to describe animals and objects and make comparisons. They play adjective games, listen to a fun song and take part in an adjectives survey.

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 questions about one of their parents, such as, “Who’s this?”, “What does s/he look like?”. 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

Say when your birthday is board questions and answers

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.

On the board write the questions from previous lessons:

When is your birthday?
What did you get for your birthday?

and have your students ask you the questions and write your answers.

Next, write on the board:

What did you do on your birthday?

Have the students ask you and say/write your answer (e.g. “I went to restaurant with my friends on my birthday”).

Finally, go around the class asking each student the 3 questions on the board.

6. Review describing people
Use some of the magazine pictures of people from last lesson. Start by sticking one picture on the board and elicit sentences about that person, such as:

He is tall.
He [hide_on_uk]has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]has got[/hide_on_us] short hair.
He [hide_on_uk]has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]has got[/hide_on_us] brown hair.
He [hide_on_uk]has[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]has got[/hide_on_us] green eyes.

Put students in pairs and hold up another picture – pairs describe the person in the picture using the sentences on the board as a model. Keep changing the picture that you are holding up and do for about 6 to 8 people pictures.

Once finished, go through all the answers as a class. Finally, ask each pair to describe their partner.

New learning and practice:

1. Introduce the adjectives
You are going to introduce the following adjectives by drawing pictures on the board: big / small, long / short, fat / thin, strong / weak, fast / slow. Don’t worry if you are not very artistic – even simple line drawings will do.

First start by drawing two lines vertically down the board so you divide the board into three equal sections. Then do the following for each set of adjectives:

big / small: in the first section draw an apple (as shown below). Elicit “apple” and write “an apple” under the picture. Then, in the second section, draw a really big apple – fill up the whole section. Teach / Elicit “big” and write “a big apple” under the picture. Finally, draw a really small apple in the last section, teach / elicit “small” and write “a small apple”.

Chorus each of the phrases three times. Then erase the pictures of the big and small apples. Invite one student up to the board and pointing in the middle section say, “draw a big apple”. Then invite another student up and say, “draw a small apple” pointing at the last section. Give each student a round of applause.

For the rest of the adjectives, follow the same drawing on the board procedure:

long / short: draw a pencil (long and short).
fat / thin: draw a cat (fat and thin).
strong / weak: draw a man (strong – with big muscles, weak – a stick man with no muscles at all).
fast / slow: draw a car (a fast, sporty car, zooming around and an old, broken down car with smoke coming out of the exhaust).

2. Play “Adjectives pictionary”
Start by playing on the board so everyone understands how to play. Erase everything from the board except the two vertical lines from the previous activity. Invite three students to the board and stand them in front of each blank section on the board and give them a marker / chalk each. Say, “Draw two thin snakes and one fat snake”. When the drawings are finished select a winner for the best picture. Play another round or two on the board with different students (use different adjectives and nouns each round).

Next, put students into groups of three and give each student a large piece of paper to draw on. Shout out the adjectives to draw and give everyone 1 minute to complete their drawings. At the end of 1 minute get everybody to hold up their pictures – you are the judge and you have to select the best picture from each group of three students as the winning picture. Then move onto the next drawings – play until all the adjectives have been practiced. Here are some ideas for drawings:

thin / fat snakes
big / small houses
fast / slow snails
long / short carrots
strong / weak animals (e.g. dogs, lions, elephants, etc.)

3. Play the “Let’s look at the animals” song
There are two options for this song – either listening and doing the worksheet or singing along doing the actions. Or you can do both!

Listening worksheet: as you play the song students listen and circle the animal which best fits the description.

Actions: get everyone to do the following actions as they sing along:

bear: act big and strong and show your claws
mouse: act small and run around like a mouse
snake: move your body like a slithering snake
hippo: act big and fat (blow out your cheeks) and roar
horse: gallop around like a horse
lion: act big and strong and roar like a lion

Lyrics for “Let’s look at the animals”

Chorus:
Let’s look at the animals,
Look, Look, Look! What’s that?

Verse 1:
It’s a bear and it’s big.
It’s a bear and it’s big.
It’s a big bear!

Chorus

Verse 2:
It’s a mouse and it’s small.
It’s a mouse and it’s small.
It’s a small mouse!

Chorus

Verse 3:
It’s a snake and it’s long.
It’s a snake and it’s long.
It’s a long snake!

Chorus

Verse 4:
It’s a hippo and it’s fat,
It’s a hippo and it’s fat,
It’s a fat hippo!

Chorus

Verse 5:
It’s a horse and it’s fast,
It’s a horse and it’s fast,
It’s a fast horse!

Chorus

Verse 6:
It’s a lion and it’s strong,
It’s a lion and it’s strong,
It’s a strong lion!

[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]

4. Do the “Animal adjectives write” worksheet
This follows on well from the song. Give out the worksheet and then model what to do – show finding the correct words in the box at the bottom of the worksheet and writing them in the blanks.

Then have everyone work on their worksheets – circulate around the classroom helping with the writings.

Finally, do a check by asking individual students to stand up and read a sentence to the class. Be sure to give lots of encouragement and a round of applause for each student.

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. Play “Find someone who”
Let do a fun activity! Give each student a “Find someone who (descriptions)” worksheet. Explain that they need to find 6 different students to do each animal action on the worksheet (for small classes you can double-up). Run through the actions on the worksheet explaining what they mean.

Then model with a student: The teacher asks the student,
“Can you run like a bear?”

And the student replies,
“Yes, I can.”

The student then needs to do the action. The teacher writes the student’s name on the sheet and checks “✓” the column for how well the student did and says, “That’s great / ok / not so good”.

Once everyone understands what to do, shout “Go!” and students circulate asking different students to do the animal actions. At the end, collate the class findings to find out who is best at doing the different animal actions (and have them show the action to everyone!).

Wrap up:

1. Assign homework: “Adjectives – draw the opposites”
Hold up the homework worksheet and model what to do – follow the dotted line and draw the opposite in the circle (e.g. draw a big bear in the circle titled “big”).

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 the “Animal adjectives write” worksheet from today’s lesson and ask some questions from it, e.g. “What does the snake look like?” and have them say the adjective, “The snake is long”.

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!