Months and seasons 2 lesson plan

“Four seasons”

Lesson 21 Level 3 Age 7-9

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Lesson 21

Months and seasons 2

In this lesson students learn about the four seasons of the year and explore vocabulary and weather associated with each season. They also do some fun seasons activities, listen to a seasons song and read a funny story.

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Age: 7-9 years
Time: 1 hour – 1 hour 20 mins
Objectives: Talking about the months and seasons of the year.
Structures: “What season is it?”, “In which season is your birthday?”.
New vocabulary: season, spring, summer, autumn, winter, hot, warm, cool, cold, picnic, beach, walk, snow.
Review vocabulary: January – December, birthday, bicycle, tablet, piano, backpack.

Lesson materials

Printables:

Silly Willy’s months reader worksheet
Seasons song worksheet
Four season worksheet

Songs:

Months march
Seasons song

Readers:

Silly Willy’s months

Supplies:

name tags for each student
board with markers / chalk
weather board (from previous class)
a ball (for the “Ball pass questions” activity)
sheets of different [hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] paper (cut up into small squares)
a timer or stopwatch
Blu-Tack or something to stick card to the walls

Notes:

In this lesson students talk about the four seasons and explore words associated with those seasons. They do some fun activities and listen to a song about seasons as well read a funny story about different months of the year.

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.

Play “Ball pass questions” to review past lessons

2. Play “Ball pass questions”
Let’s review previous lessons with this fun game. Get everybody standing in a circle. Teacher throws the ball around randomly, asking questions as students catch the ball.

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.
Round 8: 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.)?”.

3. Homework check
Check each students’ homework worksheet and ask them to read some of the month words. 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. Months review
Use the rectangles of card with the months written on from last class. Shuffle them up and show each card and have individual students read the month word to you. Then, invite that student to go up to the board and stick it on. Following that, students will continue to add the months to the board, in the correct order (January to December). Next, get everyone chanting the months in order and clapping along with the rhythm. Start slowly and each round get faster and faster until it becomes chaos and fun!

Finally ask some questions, such as “In which month is …?”:

Christmas
other holidays (e.g. Easter, famous national holidays)
hot, cold, rainy, windy, etc.
your birthday

6. Chant along to the “Months march” song
Let’s do this fun chant song again. 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]

New learning and practice:

1. Read classroom reader “Silly Willy’s months”
Let’s follow the song with a reader which uses the all of the months vocabulary. Before class, download and print off the reader “Silly Willy’s months”. As you go through each page, point to the pictures and elicit the months, as well as other vocabulary including weather and the things the characters are doing, for example:

Teacher: (pointing at the picture on page 3) Look at Silly Willy! What is he doing?
Students: Sunbathing!
Teacher: Yes, that’s right! But is it hot?
Students: No, it’s cold. It’s snowing.
Teacher: Yes, that’s right! Silly, Silly Willy! So, what month do you think it is when it’s snowing?
Students: January?
Teacher: Let’s check (reading) “Where Silly Willy lives, January and February are very cold. But Silly Willy likes to sunbathe!”. So it’s January and February.

Get the students really involved in the story by asking lots of questions about the weather during different months and activities they do (and don’t do) in their country, for example:

Teacher: Do you like to sunbathe in January and February?
Students: No!
Teacher: Why not? What is the weather like here in January and February?
Students: It’s cold and rainy.
Teacher: So, when do you like to sunbathe?
Students: In August.
etc.

After reading the story, give out a reader worksheet to each student and have everyone try to remember which months Silly Willy did the different things. Then read through the story one more time (without stopping for questions, etc.) and check through the answers as a class.

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

2. Introduce the vocabulary: the four seasons
Before class prepare four pieces of paper with the following words written on each piece:

Draw a tree. Draw flowers in the tree. Draw a sun and clouds in the sky.
Draw a tree. Draw lots of leaves in the tree. Draw a big sun in the sky.
Draw a tree. Draw some leaves in the tree. Draw leaves falling off the tree. Draw leaves on the ground. Draw clouds in the sky.
Draw a tree with no leaves. Draw snow on the ground. Draw a cloud in the sky with snow falling.

Four students are going to read these and draw the pictures on the board. Alternatively, whisper the instructions into your students’ ears or show them flashcards to copy.

In class, draw 4 large squares in the board. Invite a volunteer student to come up to the board and draw the first picture inside the first of the 4 squares. As the student is drawing, get the other students to guess what is in the picture (e.g. “What’s this?”, “It’s a tree”). Do the same with other students for the remaining three pictures.

Once all 4 pictures have been drawn, point at the first picture and ask, “When does the tree look like this?”. Elicit / Teach “Spring” and write the word under the picture. Do the same for all for pictures and chorus each season word 3 times.

End by asking questions, such as, “What season is it now?” and “In which season is your birthday?”.

3. Play “Seasons word association draw”
You’ll need sheets of different [hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] paper (cut up into small squares) and 4 cardboard boxes.

Divide the class into teams (of 3 or 4 students). Give each team one pen and lots small pieces of [hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] paper (e.g. Team A has only red paper, Team B has only blue paper, etc.). This is very important as you will be giving scores to each team based on the amount of pictures they have drawn.

Next, put 4 boxes in the 4 corners of your classroom. Each box should be labelled with a season (e.g. one box will have “Spring” written on it, another “Summer”, etc.).

Now model the activity: take one piece of paper and draw an ice cream. Elicit the word and then ask, “Where should I put this?” and gesture towards the 4 boxes. After receiving a reply for summer, go to the summer box and drop the paper in it. Next do the same for spring (a flower), autumn (a pumpkin) and winter (a woolly hat).

Finally drop a prize into each box (e.g. some [hide_on_uk]candies[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]sweets[/hide_on_us] or stickers, etc.) and explain that the team with the most (correct) pictures in each box will win the prize. Place a timer in view of everyone and set 5 minutes. Then say, “Go!”.

As each team has only one pen they will have to work together to come up with ideas and draw them. Then one player will have to rush to a box and drop the picture into it. Teams will probably find summer and winter easy but may need some prompting from you for spring and autumn. As they are drawing, walk around and ask questions (e.g. What is that?) and elicit / teach vocabulary. Make sure someone draws some key vocabulary from the song that will be sung later in the lesson (a picnic, beach, snow).

When the timer goes off get everyone to stop. You are going to count the number of papers each team has in each box – but you are going to be really strict! Throw out any badly drawn pictures which you can’t guess what they are and any pictures that are wrong or are not season specific. Elicit what each picture is when you hold it up. Count the scores and write them on the board. Then tell the class that they have an additional 5 minutes to finish but must not draw any pictures that other teams have drawn. Set the timer for a further 5 minutes and start.

When the timer goes off, be strict again about which pictures earn points and finally give out the prizes to the teams with the most points.

4. Do “Season objects writing” activity
Your students are going to write the words for the pictures they have just drawn, so this is a great activity if your students are at a high enough level to write words (even with spelling mistakes). If not (for younger students), skip this activity and go on to point 4. Take the boxes with pictures inside and give the pictures out randomly to each group. Model by holding up one of the pictures (e.g. a flower) and elicit the word. Then turn over the piece of paper and write “flower” on the back.

Give a time limit (say 5 minutes) and get each group to write words on the back of as many pictures as they can, using the one pen (again, so they will have to work as a team). If a team does not know the word, they can send one person up to the teacher with the picture to ask what it is – but the teacher will only say the word and will refuse to spell it – the students will have to try their best to spell each word.

When the timer goes off, tell everyone to stop writing. On the board draw two intersecting lines so the board is divided into four equal squares. Write a season in each of the squares. Go around the class asking for the words they have written and write the words on the board – for each correct spelling the team wins a point (also, make sure they correct their spelling mistakes on the back of the pictures). At the end total up the points and award a prize to the winning team.

Keep the pictures – we’ll use them next lesson.

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 “The seasons song”
Explain that you are going to play a song about the four seasons. Everyone needs to listen to the song and complete a worksheet showing what weather conditions and activities are mentioned for each season. Give out the worksheets and show where everybody needs to write the words. Play the song and have your students write the information from the song.

Get students to compare their answers in pairs and then go through the song one more time to do a class check. You can also encourage everyone to sing along – it’s a fun song to sing!

Lyrics for “The seasons song”

Chorus:
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

Verse 1:
In the spring, in the spring,
It’s nice and warm, nice and warm,
In the spring, in the spring,
It’s nice and warm, nice and warm,
Let’s go for a picnic!

Chorus

Verse 2:
In the summer, in the summer,
It’s very hot, very hot,
In the summer, in the summer,
It’s very hot, very hot,
Let’s go to the beach!

Chorus

Verse 3:
In the autumn, in the autumn,
It’s nice and cool, nice and cool,
In the autumn, in the autumn,
It’s nice and cool, nice and cool,
Let’s go for a walk!

Chorus

Verse 4:
In the winter, in the winter,
It’s really cold, really cold,
In the winter, in the winter,
It’s really cold, really cold,
Let’s play with the snow!

[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]

Wrap up:

1. Assign homework: “Four seasons”
Hold up the homework worksheet and show how to draw and write words associated with each season.

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 picture card from the ”Seasons word association draw” activity from earlier in the lesson. Ask, “What is this?” and “In which season do you see/wear/etc. this?”.

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!