A Stress-free, Prep-free Christmas

Planning a pre-Christmas lesson but stuck for ideas?  Worry not, I have the perfect lesson for you….

All you need for this lesson is internet access to be able to show a YouTube Video.  No other materials are required.

Aims:

• To provide the students with practice in asking yes/no questions
• To provide the students with practice in writing a narrative
• To provide the students with practice in listening for gist and detail
• To provide the students with fluency practice

Step 1 – Background Information

Tell your students (adapt to the level of your learners):

“Bob & Harry were the best of friends, they spent all day, every day together until one day, Bob had to leave Harry, he didn’t want to but he had to.  Harry was distraught and spent the next weeks feeling very sad and lonely – he missed his best friend a lot.  Then one day, Harry had an idea to try and get Harry to come back…..”

Step 2 – Instructions to Students:

-“In pairs (or small groups), take a piece of paper and a pen.”

-“Write ONE question (only yes/no questions allowed) to find out more information about Bob and Harry’s story”

-“Pass it to me for answering (one question at a time).”

-“Once you have an answer you can write your next question”

-“I will only answer questions if your English is correct, if it is not correct, I will hand it back to you for correction”

-“You have 10 minutes to gather as much information as possible about these friends.”

Step 3 – Story Creation

Now get the students to write a story about Bob and Harry based on the information they have gathered from you.  Make it clear to them that they can use as much imagination as they like.

Step 4 – Comparing Stories

Get each group to read out their story (ask the other groups to listen to find out if they have any similarities, to make sure that everyone has to listen to each other’s story).

You could also do some error correction here, focus on grammar and/or lexis etc.

Step 5 – The Big Reveal

By this stage, your students will be desperate to find out what really happened to Bob and Harry: