Teacher’s Notes Back to school – Lesson 1 Type of activity: Whole-class and pair work. Focus: Exchanging personal information; listening and speaking skills. Level: Pre-intermediate – upper-intermediate, upper secondary. Time: 45 minutes. Materials: Students’ Worksheet – Lesson 1, an egg timer. Preparation: Make a copy of the Student’s Worksheet per each pair of students. (Optional) Prepare a worksheet with your answers using wordle.net and print out a copy for each pair of students. For instructions, see the notes below. Procedure: 1. Greet the class. Explain that today students are going to learn a lot of things about you and their classmates, regardless of whether it is the first year they have been studying together or they already know each other. 2. On the board write your true answers in the categories from the Students’ Worksheet in random order. Use short answers – see the sample attached below the Teacher’s Notes. Alternatively, you can use wordle.net to create a document with your answers. For multiple word answers use a tilde ~ between the words so that they are not separated. Print out a copy for each pair of students. If you want, you can skip a few categories. 3. Explain to the class that you have put on the board/on the worksheet some true information about yourself. In pairs, students have to guess what each answer reveals about you, e.g. whose name it is, whether it is something you enjoy doing, etc. Give students 5 minutes to discuss their ideas. 4. When the time is up, give each pair a copy of the Students’ Worksheet and ask them to match the answers to the correct categories. If you have not given the answers in all the categories, tell the class how many are extra. 5. Read out each answer in turn, elicit the category and give some additional information or explanation, e.g. “Bandzior? Yes, it’s the name of my pet, it’s actually a goldfish which I got from a friend for my birthday two years ago. Bandzior lives in a small tank in my kitchen. I hope I can train it to grant my wishes one day…”
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6. Students write their own personal information in the same manner as you did on a clean A4 size piece of paper. They can use the categories from the Student’s Worksheet or any other information, e.g. the football club they support or their favourite computer game. Encourage them to write such information which may surprise their classmates, especially if they already know each other well. 7. Put students into two rows: A and B, facing each other, so that each student is sitting opposite a classmate. The rows can be straight or shaped like a horseshoe. If you cannot move the chairs in the classroom, students can do the activity standing up. Each student needs to show the piece of paper with his/her own answers to the person sitting/standing opposite. Give each pair 3 minutes to read the answers and find out as much as they can about each other, guessing the categories, giving additional information, etc. Set the egg timer. 8. When the time is up, each student in row A moves one seat to the right, with the last person going to the first seat so that everybody has a different partner. Students try to find out as much as possible about their new partner in 3 minutes. Continue the activity with students changing partners until it is 5 minutes till the end of the lesson. Ask the whole class to tell one interesting piece of information about each student, preferably something you did not know before. The lesson can be extended to 90 minutes if you have two lessons in a row. Students then should be given more time to discuss the information in pairs, e.g. 5 minutes, and at the final stage you can elicit 3–5 pieces of information about each student. Extension: Each student uses wordle.net to create a worksheet with his/her own personal information, the same or different than in class. The worksheets should not be signed. Collect the worksheets, mix them up and display them on the walls of the classroom. In pairs, students walk around the classroom and guess whose answers each worksheet contains. Alternatively, collect the worksheets, pick them out in random order and read out the answers. Encourage the class to guess who each worksheet belongs to. If any answers surprise you, ask students for more details or an explanation.
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Teacher’s Notes Back to school – Lesson 1 Sample answers
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Teacher’s Notes Back to school – Lesson 2 Type of activity: Group, individual and pair work. Focus: Past simple questions, vocabulary connected with travel, nature and geography; reading, listening and speaking skills. Level: Pre-intermediate – upper-intermediate, upper secondary. Time: 45 minutes. Materials: Student’s Worksheets 1, 2, 3 – Lesson 2, (optional) a map of the world and/or a computer connected to the Internet. Preparation: Make a copy of Student’s Worksheet 1 per each group of four and cut it up into question cards. Make copies of Student’s Worksheets 1 and 2, one set per student. Procedure: 1. Explain that today’s lesson is about holiday places. Tell students that first they are going to talk about the places they visited on their last summer holiday. If they did not go anywhere, they can talk about an earlier holiday, e.g. the winter break or the previous summer holiday. 2. Divide students into groups of four. Place the set of cards from Students’ Worksheet 1 face down in front of each group. Explain the rules of the game: – One student picks up a card with a question in such a way that he/she can only see the back of the card. – The other group members can see the question and they take turns to answer it about their last holiday. – The person holding the card then tries to guess the question based on the answers. – All the questions are in the past simple tense. – When the question is guessed, a different group member picks up the second card and the procedure is continued until there are no cards left. If necessary, review the question structure in the past simple. 3. Students play the game until the first group finishes. Next, individual students report to the whole class the most interesting things about their group members’ holidays. 4. Introduce the idea of a bucket list: the list of things to do before you ‘kick the bucket’, i.e. die. Explain that students are going to read an article on ‘Five places to see before you die’. Ask them to predict what places are going to be mentioned. © Macmillan Polska 2012
5. Give each student a copy of Student’s Worksheet 2. Students look at the headings to check their predictions. Then they read the full article and rank the places 1-5, depending on the order in which they would like to see them. Students do not need to know all the words, but they must understand enough to be able to justify their choices. Ask students to ignore the highlighting in the article at this stage. 6. Put students into pairs to compare the results and explain their choices to each other. Name the first place in the article. Students who have ranked it as number 1 raise their hands. Ask one or two of those students to justify their choice. Repeat with the remaining places. (Optional) If you have brought a map of the world, ask volunteers to find the places from the article on the map. If you have a computer connected to the Internet in class, google the places and show students the images. 7. Students put Student’s Worksheets 2 face down in front of them. Give each student a copy of Student’s Worksheet 3. Explain that the scrambled words come from the article on Student’s Worksheet 2. Students should put the letters in order to find the words and then match them to the definitions. They can first read the definitions to find out which words they are looking for. Students work individually and then compare their answers in pairs. Finally, they should look at the highlighted words in the article to check their answers. 8. Check the answers to Activity 3 with the whole class. Drill the pronunciation of the words. Ask students to read the article again and to underline any other words they do not know. Elicit the words and explain their meaning. Answers: a. landmark – definition 12, b. man-made – definition 6, c. equator – definition 11, d. reef – definition 5, e. rock – definition 9, f. deep – definition 3, g. waterfall – definition 1, h. lookout – definition 4, i. grasslands – definition 2, j. chairlift – definition 8, k. artificial – definition 10, l. camel – definition 7 Extension In pairs, students prepare a list of ‘Five places NOT to see before you die’ and discuss the reasons. Elicit the lists from different pairs and ask them to justify their choice.
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Teacher’s Notes Back to school – Lesson 3 Type of activity: Group, whole-class and pair work. Focus: Phrases for making and responding to complaints; listening, speaking and reading. Level: Pre-intermediate – upper-intermediate, upper secondary. Time: 45 minutes. Materials: Student’s Worksheets 1, 2, 3 – Lesson 3. Each student needs a coin. Preparation: Make copies of Student’s Worksheet 1 for half the students in the class and copies of Student’s Worksheet 2 for the other half. Make a copy of Student’s Worksheet 3 for each student.
4. Explain that students are going to act out different problems on holiday. There will be five dialogues in five different places, and students will either play tourists making complaints or the other party listening to the complaints and reacting appropriately.
Procedure:
6. In pairs, students toss their coins. If the results match, the complaint in the dialogue should be accepted and a solution provided. If the coins do not match, the response should be delayed or the complaint should be rejected and some explanation given. Students then act out the dialogue, using the expressions from Student’s Worksheet 3. Set a time limit of 4 minutes.
1. Explain that today students are going to discuss problems we can encounter on holidays. Write the following places on the board: hotel, airport, restaurant, shop, train. Divide the class into five groups. Assign a different place from the board to each group. Groups then make a list of all the possible problems tourists can face in those places. Set a time limit of 5 minutes. 2. Each group presents their list of problems. Brainstorm the possible solutions the employees of these places can offer, e.g. a refund, a replacement, a change of room, a free meal, etc. Find out if your students have ever experienced any of the problems mentioned and ask them to share the details of the situations. 3. Write the following language functions on the board: making complaints, accepting a complaint, solving problems, delaying a response, rejecting a complaint. Explain any words students may not understand. In pairs, students brainstorm some possible polite expressions for each of the functions on the board. Set a time limit of 5 minutes. Then give students copies of Student’s Worksheet 3 to compare their ideas.
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5. Students sit in two rows facing each other, so that everybody has a partner in the second row. Give students in one row copies of Student’s Worksheet 1 and in the other copies of Student’s Worksheet 2. Everybody reads his/her role card for dialogue 1. Explain any words students do not understand.
7. When the time is up, ask Students A to move one seat to the left, with the last person moving to the front of the row. Everybody has a new partner now. Students read the role cards for dialogue 2, toss the coins and do the role play. Continue the procedure with the remaining dialogues, each time asking Students A to move one seat so that they work with a new partner. 8. Monitor the activity and provide help. Make sure students are polite to each other. After each round you can ask one pair to present their dialogue to the whole class. Extension In pairs, students write a dialogue for one of the situations in Student’s Worksheets 1 and 2. They should include a few expressions from Student’s Worksheet 3.
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