Directions lesson plan

“Jump to the left!”

Lesson 35 Level 1 Age 3-5

Lesson plans for ESL kids teachers

Lesson 35

Directions

In this lesson students practice saying action verbs and the directions: left, right, forward, back. They play fun directions games, do actions to an energetic song and read a funny story with instructions to do exercises.

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Age: 3-5 years
Time: 40 mins – 1 hour
Objectives: Saying action verbs and directions: left, right, forward, back.
Structures: “Jump (to the left, to the right, forward, back)“, “Are you ready?”, Let’s go!”.
New vocabulary: left, right, forward, back, jump, turn around, touch the ground, turn, sit down, stand up, clap your hands.
Review vocabulary: happy, sad, angry, sleepy, hungry, scared, sunny, rainy, noisy, bedtime, lunchtime, stormy.

Lesson materials

Flashcards:

Feelings flashcards: happy, sad, angry, sleepy, hungry, scared

Printables:

Are you ready? Let’s go! reader worksheet
Left/Right trace worksheet

Songs:

Hello song
Goodbye song
The weather song
The directions song

Readers:

Are you ready? Let’s go!

Supplies:

name tags for each student
a glove puppet
[hide_on_uk]colored[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]coloured[/hide_on_us] crayons / pencils
a large cloth bag
length of rope x2
hula-hoops (optional)
blindfold
picture of a donkey or other animal (for “Pin the tail on the donkey” game)
weather board (see end of this page for details)
cushions (1 per student)
device to play the songs on

Notes:

In this lesson students practice saying action verbs and the directions: left, right, forward, back. Students do directions activities with ropes, follow instructions to a song, read a fun story and play directions games.

Lesson procedure:

Warm up and maintenance:

1. Greetings
Greet the students by name as they enter the classroom and gesture for them to sit down (on cushions if you have them) in a fan-shape around you.

2. Name tags
Before class, prepare some blank name tags (stickers or pin-on tags) and some cards, each with a student’s name written on clearly – students will use them to copy their names onto their name tags. Sit down with your students and lay out the name cards in front of you. Pick up each card and encourage the student to recognize his/her name. Do this for everyone.

Finally, have everyone take out a crayon or pencil and copy their name on their tags and stick them on.

Introduce glove puppet - greetings and introductions activity

3. Glove puppet greetings
Bring out your glove puppet bag and have everyone shout “Hello!“ into the bag until he wakes up and jumps out of the bag. Then model talking to the glove puppet …

Teacher: “Hello”, What’s your name?”
Puppet: “My name is…”.
Puppet: “How are you?”
Teacher: “I’m fine, thank you”.
Puppet: “How old are you?”
Teacher: “I’m …”.

… and then have the puppet say hello to each student and ask them the same questions, including their age. Finally, go around saying “Goodbye” and “See you” before going back into the bag and back to sleep.

4. Sing the “Hello song”
Sit in a circle and sing the song (clap along or pat knees).

Lyrics for the “Hello song”

Hello, hello,
How are you today?
Hello, hello,
How are you today?

I’m fine, thank you,
I’m fine, thank you,
I’m fine, thank you,
And how about you?

Hello, hello,
How are you today?
I’m fine, thank you,
And how about you?

Gestures for the “Hello song”

These are quite straight forward. First time you play the song do the gestures and encourage everyone to do them with you.

Wave as you sing the “Hello, hello” parts.
Gesture to others as you sing, “How are you today?”
Point to yourself as you sing, “I’m fine, thank you”
Hand gesture towards another student as you sing, “And how about you?”.

[hide_on_uk]Short sample (members get full-length song):
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[hide_on_us]Short sample (members get full-length song):
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5. Homework check
Check each student’s homework that you set in the last lesson. Ask each student some questions about their homework worksheet (e.g. “How do you feel when it’s sunny?“ while pointing at the happy face), 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.

6. Do “Exercise routine” activity
Say the following and have the students follow your lead:

“Stand up” (Teacher stands and so does everyone else)
“Hands up / hands down” (do 4 or 5 times)
“Jump” (4 or 5 times)
“Kick” (4 or 5 times)
“Run! / Stop!” (4 or 5 times)
“Turn around! / Stop!” (4 or 5 times)
“Wiggle” (a few seconds)
finally “Sit down”.

7. Do the “What’s in the bag?” activity
Time for the bag again. Before class, put a couple of new objects (e.g. a crayon, a plastic bottle, a sock, a paper cup, a leaf, a ball, a teddy, etc. – anything lying around (and safe!)) into the bag.

Show the bag to your students, shake it to rattle the objects inside, and ask, “What’s in the bag?”.

Randomly pull out different objects and teach/elicit the words – in each case, have students hold and pass the objects around. You can even have students pull the objects out of the bag instead of you taking them out – with eyes closed to make it fun!

Finally, place/throw the objects around the classroom and have each student retrieve an object as you call out its name and put it back in the bag.

8. Sing “The weather song”
Time for the weather section of the lesson! Put the weather flashcards on the board in the order of the song (or use our song poster). Have all the students stand up and watch you as you sing along and use the gestures. Encourage them to join in and sing along.

Lyrics for “The weather song”

Verse 1:
How’s the weather? How’s the weather?
Look outside.
How’s the weather? How’s the weather?
Look outside.
It’s sunny, it’s rainy, it’s windy, it’s cloudy.
It’s snowy, it’s foggy, it’s hot, it’s cold.

Verse 2:
How’s the weather? How’s the weather?
Look outside.
How’s the weather? How’s the weather?
Look outside.
It’s sunny, it’s rainy, it’s windy, it’s cloudy.
It’s snowy, it’s foggy, it’s hot, it’s cold.

Gestures for “The weather song”

There are some easy gestures you can do as you sing along to the song:

For the question part “How’s the weather?”, sing along and do the ‘palms of the hands up’ question gesture.
For the “Look outside” part, face the window and put your hand over your eyes (like a salute), as if you were looking into the distance.
Use hand gestures for the weather words:
- sunny: slowly spread your arms out
- rainy: wiggle your fingers downwards like rain
- windy: gesture wind blowing out of your mouth
- cloudy: make cloudy shapes with your hands
- snowy: wiggle your fingers downwards like snow and shiver
- foggy: close your eyes and put your hand out in front like you are trying to feel for something you can’t see
- hot: fan your face
- cold: shiver and wrap your arms around your body

FREE SAMPLE (full-length song):

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[hide_on_us][/hide_on_us]

9. Talk about the weather outside
Motion for your students to come over to the window (or even outside). Say, “How’s the weather? Look outside”. Elicit the weather from the words they learned in the last lessons (It’s sunny / cloudy / windy / rainy / snowy / foggy / hot / cold).

Depending on weather conditions, you can introduce more weather words, such as:

stormy
misty
showery

warm
cool
freezing

humid
frosty
icy

drizzly

Weather board for showing today's weather

10. Use the “Weather board”
Use the weather board that you created in the previous class (see instructions here). Invite some students to come up and put weather pictures for today’s weather on the board. Make sure they say the word as they put the card on the board.

If you introduced any new weather words as you were talking about the weather just now, add these pictures to your board – you can either draw them there and then or prepare the pictures before class.

11. Play “Guess the feelings”
Let’s play this game to review the feelings vocabulary review from the last lesson. First, the teacher looks at a feeling flashcard and acts out that feeling – the students shout out the feeling word. Do for all the feelings words from the last lessons.

Next, have a volunteer come to the front of the class and show him/her a feelings flashcard. The student does the action and the first to shout out the answer can come to the front of the class to do the next one.

New learning and practice:

1. Teach left / right
Get a long length of rope and lay it on the floor from the front of the classroom to the back. Stand at the front and to one side of the rope and get everyone to line up behind you, facing forward. Shout, “Jump to the left” and jump left over the rope. Get everyone to follow you. Then do the same for the right: “Jump to the right”. Do this a few times getting everyone to copy you as you shout out, “Jump to the left / right”.

Next, the teacher can leave the line and shout out for the rest of the class to jump left / right over the rope. To make it into a game, sometimes shout out for the side of the rope everyone is already on – in this case everyone must jump but stay on the correct side of the rope.

2. Teach forward / back
Now move the rope so it goes across the classroom, left to right. Stand behind the rope with everyone in line with you. Shout, “Jump forward” and jump over the rope, with everyone copying you. Next, shout, “Jump back”.

Continue in the same way as with point 1 above.

3. Practice left / right / forward / back
Put a second length of rope from the front to the back of the classroom, so with the two ropes it forms a large “+” in the room. Get everyone to start front, left. Shout out instructions (e.g. “Jump to the right”, “Jump back”, etc.) so that everyone jumps over the ropes.

Start off slowly and then get faster and faster.

4. Left / right / forward / back pair activity
Put the students into pairs. If you have hula-hoops you can use them, but if not they aren’t necessary. Demonstrate to the class with one student. Tell the student to stand in the hula-hoop (or just in some space). Say to the student, “Jump forward” and the student must do that. Then say another action (e.g. “Jump to the right”).

Continue giving instructions so the student jumps around the space in the hula-hoop (or just in the space in the room). Now, get your pairs to do the activity, with one student shouting out instructions to his/her partner. After a while, get the pairs to change.

5. Practice the verbs of the song
Stand everyone in front of you. Say the first verb and dot he action (e.g. “turn around”). Get everyone to follow you. Continue through all of the verbs and repeat a few times so that everyone knows the actions. You can also put the song sheet on the board so everyone can see the actions.

6. Sing “The directions song”
Now that everyone has got the idea of the actions for the song they should be ready. The song is pretty fast so make sure everyone is ready to start. The teacher should also do the actions of the song and sing along so to encourage everyone to follow.

Play the song through the first time and just focus on getting the actions right. After that play the song a couple more times and encourage everyone to sing as well. You can play this song each week – it will become a class [hide_on_uk]favorite[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]favourite[/hide_on_us]!

Lyrics for “The directions song”

Are you ready?

Chorus:
Jump to the left,
Jump to the right,
Jump forward,
And jump back.

Jump to the left,
Jump to the right,
Jump forward,
And jump back.

Verse 1:
Turn around and touch the ground,
Turn to the left and turn to the right.
Turn around and touch the ground,
Turn to the left and turn to the right.

Chorus

Verse 2:
Sit down and stand up,
Jump up and down and clap your hands.
Sit down and stand up,
Jump up and down and clap your hands.

Gestures for “The directions song”

The actions are very simple: as you sing along do the actions of the song.

[hide_on_uk]Short sample (members get full-length song):
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[hide_on_us]Short sample (members get full-length song):
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7. 5-minute play time
This is an optional segment that can be part of all your lessons at this level. Allow your students to play with any games or toys you have. If possible, use large tubs or boxes to hold the toys and bring them out for a few minutes each lesson. Tubs filled with animals, plastic fruit, building blocks, kitchen sets, plastic food, cars & vehicles, Mr. Potato Head dolls and so on.

8. Read classroom reader “Are you ready? Let’s go!”
Before class, download and print off the reader “Are you ready? Let’s go!”. As you go through each page, point to the pictures, elicit the actions and have everyone copy the actions:

Teacher: (pointing to the picture of the clown on page 2 and reading) “Stand up …” What is he doing?
Students: Clap!
Teacher: Yes, that’s right! (Reading) “… and clap 6 times”. Ok, everybody stand up and clap 6 times. Are you ready? Let’s go!
(Students stand up and clap)

Get the students really involved in the story by joining in with the actions. You can even get single students to do different actions (giving lots of praise when correctly doing the actions).

After reading the story, give out a reader worksheet to each student and read through the story one more time (without stopping for questions, etc.) as students complete the table. Then go through the answers as a class.

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

9. Play “Pin the tail to the donkey”
To finish the lesson we’ll play a fun game – one that is a really popular party game. You’ll need a blindfold and large picture of a donkey or alternatively, draw one on the board. In fact, it doesn’t even need to be a donkey – it can be any animal with a tail (cat, dog, monkey, etc.). If using a picture, cut the animal out and then cut out the tail. The tail needs to have a something sticky attached to it, such as blu-tack, so it can be stuck onto the picture.

A student is then blindfolded and the rest of the class gives him/her directions which way to go – left, right, up or down. The winning student is the one that places the tail closes to the correct position.

Wrap up:

1. Assign homework: “Left/Right trace” worksheet
Hold up the homework worksheet – this is a fun tracing activity. Model by tracing from right to left on the first dashed line and the left to right on the next line.

Give out the worksheets and say, “Put your homework in your bags” and help them to do so – this is important as they will probably want to start working on them right away.

2. Say goodbye to the glove puppet
Take out the bag again and get everyone to wake up the glove puppet by shouting its name into the bag (e.g. “Cookie Monster!”). Bring out the puppet and go through the same routine – go to each student and say hello, ask their name and the say goodbye / see you. Then put the puppet back in the bag (back to sleep).

3. Sing the “Goodbye song”
Sit together in a circle and sing and clap along.

Lyrics for the “Goodbye song”

Goodbye, goodbye,
See you again.
Goodbye, goodbye,
See you again.

It’s time to go,
It’s time to go,
It’s time to go,
See you next time.

Goodbye, goodbye,
See you again.
It’s time to go,
See you next time.

Gestures for the “Goodbye song”

These are quite straight forward. First time you play the song do the gestures and encourage everyone to do them with you.

Wave as you sing the “Goodbye, goodbye” parts.
Hold your hand above your eyes (as you would when you are looking into the distance and keeping the sun out of your eyes) and look at another student as you sing, “See you again”.
Tap watch (or imaginary watch) and then point to the door as you sing, “It’s time to go”.
Point towards another student as you sing, “See you next time”.

[hide_on_uk]Short sample (members get full-length song):
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[hide_on_us]Short sample (members get full-length song):
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4. 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 say, “Jump to the left, jump to the right, jump forward, jump back”.

When they jump correctly say goodbye and let them leave. If they make a mistake, have them go back to the end of the line – they will have to try again once they reach the front!

Future lessons: Reviewing and checking the weather each lesson:

1. Prepare a “Weather board”
Prepare a piece of cardboard and cover it with felt – you are going to pin this to the wall. If you can, try and get blue felt (to represent the sky). Write at the top in large letters, “How’s the weather today?”. Below the write “Today it’s”. Cut out weather pictures (such as our weather flashcards) and stick some velcro on the back. Arrange the weather pictures around the edge of the board and then put the board on the wall of your classroom.

We have made a video showing how to make a weather board here:

2. Sing The weather song
In the warm up section of your lesson you can include a weather section – introduce this section by singing the weather song (with gestures).

3. Look outside
Get everyone to look outside by saying, “How’s the weather? Look outside”. Elicit the weather for that day.

4. Put the weather pictures on the weather board
Invite some students to come up and put the weather pictures on the board. Make sure these students say the word as they put the card on the board.