A designer lessons ESL lesson plan developed by George Chilton

No-one expects the Spanish inquisition.

This is a zero-prep unplugged review lesson aimed at reviewing question formation. The students will test their speaking, listening and memory skills.

Lesson aims:

• To practise question formation
• Conversation skills
• Listening and memory skills
• Error correction
• Syntax in question and response

Stage One

Depending on the number of students; write a list of words that could begin questions on the board:

who, what, where, when, how, would, can, could, is, are, was, were, do, did, have, if

If you have more than 16 students you can repeat words.

Tell your students that they have to pick a question word. They can do this by coming up to the board, rubbing off the word and writing it down in large letters on a post-it note.

Each student should have a different question word, though if you have more than 16, there may be some repeats.

Stage Two – Constructing and Correcting questions

Ask your students to take two minutes to write a question down. Monitor as they do this and help correct while they work. Next go around the circle and ask your students to read their question.

Write down and correct any errors as a class. The students should now memorise their questions.

Stage Three – Mingle

Get your students standing, tell them they are only allowed to have the post-it note and not the question. They must walk around and find a partner to talk to. They should ask the question they have memorised and get a response. They should also ask a follow-up question.

Once they have finished their interaction they swap post-it notes, and therefore questions.

The partners must remember the question they have been asked, because they must ask their next partner the question their previous partner prepared.

To make that a little clearer, look at the example below;

– Joana takes the question she was just given and asks another students.

Interaction one:

Xavi: If you could be a superhero, who would you be?

Joana: I would be cat woman

Joana: Where would you like to live?

Xavi: I’d like to live in France.

Joana gives Xavi a piece of paper with “Where” written on it and Xavi give her “If.”

Interaction two

Joana: If you could be a superhero, who would you be?

Alfonso: Batman, because I like leather masks.

Xavi: Where would you like to live?

Urma: I’d like to live in Burma.

Xavi: Of course you would.

Allow the students to talk to several other partners. They should enjoy the mingle, but it will also be a challenge for them as they have to remember their previous partner’s question.

Stage Three

Once the students are seated, ask them to find their post-it note

Ask them to dictate the last question they asked.

Write the question on the board as they read it, including any mistakes they may have made.

Once you have all the questions written, ask you students to make corrections in pairs.

Next ask your students to tell you what the corrections are, mark these in a different colour on the board and provide any grammar explanation that may be necessary.

Conclude by asking the students whether the questions on the board are the same as the questions they originally wrote. Most, especially the more complicated ones, will have changed in some way.

It is interesting to see, as the students reconstruct they partner’s questions, how some questions become simplified and other more complex. This lesson will test your students’ listening comprehension and recall abilities. They should find it challening and maybe even a little intriguing.

Good luck!

Designer Lessons by George Chilton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Creado a partir de la obra en designerlessons.wordpress.com