Months and seasons 1 lesson plan

“When is your birthday?”

Lesson 20 Level 3 Age 7-9

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Lesson 20

Months and seasons 1

In this lesson students learn the months of the year and discuss which months contain important days. They also do some fun activities to help learn the months in sequence, chant along to an energetic months song and do a months ordering worksheet.

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Age: 7-9 years
Time: 1 hour – 1 hour 20 mins
Objectives: Saying the months of the year.
Structures: “What month is it?”, “In which month is your birthday?”.
New vocabulary: January – December, birthday, bicycle, tablet, piano, backpack.
Review vocabulary: pet, dog, cat, hamster, rabbit, goldfish, mouse, turtle, parrot, horse, elephant.

Lesson materials

Flashcards:

“[hide_on_uk]Do you have[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Have you got[/hide_on_us]” flashcards: goldfish, horse, cat, bicycle, tablet, elephant, hamster, dog, piano, rabbit, backpack, turtle

Printables:

Months order worksheet
Months scramble worksheet

Songs:

Months march

Supplies:

name tags for each student
board with markers / chalk
weather board (from previous class)
a bottle (for the “Spin the bottle” game)
a calendar (an English one, if possible)
different [hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] rectangles of card
a marker pen
Blu-Tack or something to stick card to the walls

Notes:

In this lesson students learn the months of the year and discuss which months contain important days. They do some fun activities to help remember the order of the months and learn a new song. Learning all the months in their correct order is not the easiest task, but using the song in this lesson regularly helps a lot!

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 “Spin the bottle”
Let’s review previous lessons with this fun game. Sit everyone in a circle with a bottle in the middle. Teacher spins the bottle. When it stops spinning the student it is pointing to has to answer a question. If the answer is correct, then that student can spin the bottle. Either the teacher or the student spinning the bottle can ask the questions.

Ask questions as follows:

Round 1: Numbers 1-150 – write numbers on the board.
Round 2: Likes & dislikes for food and drink – “Do you like milk?”, “Yes, I do / No, I don’t”.
Round 3: Clothes – “What are you wearing?”. “What do you wear on rainy days?”, etc.
Round 4: Days of the week – say in the correct order.
Round 5: Daily routines – hold up a flashcard with a daily routine and ask, “What is this?”, then “What time do you get up?”.
Round 6: Ability – hold up a flashcard and ask, “Can you …?” and “Can your (mother) …?” questions.
Round 7: Parts of the body – say, “Touch your (shoulders)” and the student touches the correct body part.

3. Homework check
Check each students’ homework worksheet and ask them to read some of the words on the word search. 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 pets and possessions by playing the “[hide_on_uk]Do you have[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Have you got[/hide_on_us] …?” game
Use the “[hide_on_uk]Do you have[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Have you got[/hide_on_us]” flashcards (goldfish, horse, cat, bicycle, tablet, elephant, hamster, dog, piano, rabbit, backpack, turtle).

Play “Flashcard reveal”: take the first flashcard and place it behind the pack of the other cards, so it is hidden from view. Slowly push the flashcard up so that the picture is revealed, bit by bit, to the class.

Encourage everyone to shout out the words as the pictures are revealed. As each picture appears, ask a student a question, e.g.

“[hide_on_uk]Do you have[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Have you got[/hide_on_us] a goldfish?”

Elicit the answer (Yes, I [hide_on_uk]do[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]have[/hide_on_us] or No, I [hide_on_uk]don’t[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]haven’t[/hide_on_us]) – if the answer is yes, ask some additional questions, such as:

Is it a boy or a girl?
What’s his/her name?
How old is s/he?
What [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] is s/he?

After a few pictures, show some of the (non-animal) objects, such as a bicycle and a tablet. This helps show that the key structures can be used with other nouns. Again, ask extra questions if the student answers yes.

New learning and practice:

Use a calendar to teach the months of the year

1. Do “Calendar fun” to introduce the months of the year
Start off by looking at a calendar with everyone (an English one, if possible). Have some fun with the calendar first: ask students to point at holidays such as Christmas and to point out their birthdays. Ask, “In which month is your birthday?” to each student and point to the month word (e.g. January) at the top of that month. Start to teach / elicit the English words for months as you discuss their birthdays.

Ask what month it is now. Then ask when the following are (using the calendar):

the month Christmas is in
months other holidays are in (e.g. Easter, famous national holidays – this depends on the country you are teaching in)
months when it is hot, cold, rainy, windy, etc. … any weather conditions you can think of (we’ll teach seasons in the next lesson, so no need to introduce seasons vocabulary yet)

2. Play “Put the months in order”
Before class, prepare some [hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] rectangles of card and write the months of the year in thick marker pen on each rectangle of card. You’ll be putting students in pairs so make enough sets for each pair. Also, if each month can be written on a different colored card it will help the students to quickly identify each month.

Put your students in pairs and give each pair a set of shuffled up cards. By referring to the calendar, have the pairs put the months in order on the floor or table.

3. Practice saying the months of the year
Everyone will now have the months cards in front of them, in the correct order. Get everyone to touch each card and repeat after you as you chorus the months of the year paying special attention to the first letter of each word (e.g. “J” for “January”). Run through a few times, getting faster and faster.

Finally, get the pairs to mix up the cards – explain that they are going to race to see which pair can put their cards in order first. Say “Ready, steady, go!” and let the students put the cards in order.

4. Play “Wall touch”
Give each pair some Blue-Tak or something to stick the cards on the wall with. Ask everyone to randomly stick their cards all over the walls around the room. Then bring everyone into the middle of the room.

Shout out, “January!” and everyone has to race over to a January card and touch it. Then “February!” and so on (in the correct order) until you make it through all the months. Play another round, this time faster.

Finish by saying, “In which month is your birthday? – touch that month!” and have everyone run and touch the correct month.

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. Chant along to the “Months march” song
Put one set of months cards on the board in the correct order. Get everyone to stand up and following these simple steps in time with the song:

If you have a large room with plenty of space for everyone to march around:

Get everyone to line up facing forwards. Everyone must stand to attention like soldiers (chin up, chests out, perfectly straight and still)
Start the music and get everyone to march in time to the music on the command “Ready … March!”. Everyone needs to march in a perfect line, arms swinging up to the horizontal.
The first verse of the song is a call / repeat style: the singer calls out the months and everyone repeats. Have everyone marching up and down the classroom shouting out the months.
On the command “Everybody … Stop!” everyone stops and stands to attention, perfectly still. Then start marching again on “Ready … March!”.
This time there is no repeating. Students have to remember the months and shout them out as they march.

If you only have a small room or don’t have much space:

Follow the same steps as above but get everyone to march on the spot.

Lyrics for “Months march”

Ready … March!

January (January)
February (February)
March (March)
April (April)
May (May)
June (June)
July (July)
August (August)
September (September)
October (October)
November (November)
December (December)

Everybody … Stop!

Ready … March!

January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December.

Everybody … Stop!

[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]

7. Do “Months order” worksheet
Give out the “Months order” worksheet to each student.

As your students are doing their worksheets, circulate and ask questions (e.g. “What month is it?”, “In which month is your birthday?”, etc.).

Wrap up:

1. Assign homework: “Months scramble”
Hold up the homework worksheet and show how to unscramble and write some of the months words.

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 show a month card from today’s lesson and elicit what it is. Then ask, “In which month is your birthday?”.

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!