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Classroom lesson plans and interactive smart board activities.

Verb images

This lesson asks students to think about tense and aspect, what they mean, and how else we can communicate those meanings.

Goals

  • Identify verb tense and aspect. 
  • Explain the meaning of verb tense and aspect. 
  • Use multimodal literacy skills to present information from words as pictures. 

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will be describing some pictures using language, and then drawing some pictures to describe language.

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Verb images: Activity

The girls are rehearsing a song.

Several boys were playing football.

Sally has studied French for three years.

John has been studying French for one hour.

 

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Verbs in fiction

Exploring verb choices in different literary texts

In this lesson, students identify verbs in fictional extracts and discuss the reasons why authors may have chosen particular verbs in their writing.

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Verbs in fiction: Activity

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Verbs in persuasive language

In this lesson, students will analyse persuasive language in a charity appeal, and then write their own charity appeal. There is a particular focus on the way modal auxiliary verbs can be used to persuade.

Goals

  • Identify modal auxiliary verbs.
  • Analyse persuasive language.
  • Practise writing persuasively.

Lesson Plan

Activity 1

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Verbs in persuasive language: Activity 1

Activity 1

Identify the modal verbs in this extract by clicking on them, then check your score at the end.

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Verbs in persuasive language: Activity 3

Activity 3

Write your own charity appeal, using the source material below. It is a statement from a charity about their aims and methods. Make use of a range of persuasive devices, including modal verbs.

The "Live Not Exist" charity has been set up with the following key aims:

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Word choice

Why do writers use some words and not others? This lesson looks at word choice options, both grammatical and semantic.

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Word choice: Activity 1

What word would you place in the blank slot?

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Word choice: Activity 2

Read this extract from a novel and think about the ways in which the writer has chosen specific words to convey his description.

My earliest memories are a confusion of hilly fields and dark, damp stables, and rats that scampered along the beams above my head. But I remember well enough the day of the horse sale. The terror of it stayed with me all my life.

From Michael Morpurgo, Warhorse

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Word clouds in action

Goals

  • Examine a poem as a corpus, like a body of linguistic data.
  • Linguistically analyse the words used in a poem.
  • Create a word list based on a poem.
  • Present linguistic findings visually using Wordle.

Lesson Plan

Wordle is a simple corpus tool which allows you to paste in text and create a ‘word cloud’ that displays the frequency of words by their relative size in a cloud.

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Word frequency

What are the most frequently used words in English? And could we do without them?

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Word frequency: Activity

The 10 most common English words are:

the

of

and

a

in

to

it

is/was

I

for

Can you answer the following questions without using these 10 words?

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Word salads (primary)

In this lesson, students arrange words on the smart board in order to create acceptable sentences.

Goals

  • Use implicit grammatical knowledge to arrange word tiles on a smart board into sentences.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will arrange words to make sentences. All of the example sentences here have been drawn from our corpus.

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Word salads (primary): Commands activity

Look
what
I
found
.

Enjoy
the
show
.

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Word salads (primary): Questions activity

Have
you
seen
her
?

Can
you
tell
me
?

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Word salads (primary): Statement activity

He
talked
to
people
.

I
saw
him
in
London
.

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Words

This lesson looks at words and word-formation and is designed for KS1 students.

Goals

  • To explore the definition of the notion 'word'. 
  • To explore how words are formed and understand some word-formation processes.
  • To explore how words create meaning.

Lesson Plan

Start the lesson by asking your students to discuss what a ‘word’ is. It's a surprisingly tricky thing to define! 

Next, display the following words on the board:

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Words

Lesson

Objective

To explore the meaning of simple, everyday words and how they relate to your experience of the world.

There are many kinds of words.

Do you know the words for what you see in the picture? Talk to a partner and write down as many words as you can.

Can you describe what you do in the morning before you go to school? Here is a list of what you might do, but the order in which you do things has been mixed up:

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Words

Plan

Activity 1

Show learners the image in the first slide. Ask them to work with a partner and write down as many words as they can see. Share back with the whole class and accept any valid answers. 

Activity 2

Show learners the list of activities. Ask them to put the letters a-f in the appropriate order. Circulate and accept any reasonable answers. On the next slide, disucss possible solutions as a whole class. 

Activity 3

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World Englishes debate

This is a challenging lesson that can be a fantastic springboard for discussion with more able students. How do we decide whether regional, non-standard English is acceptable or not, and what role does context play?

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World Englishes debate: Activity

In 1991, Professor Randolph Quirk and Professor Braj Kachru published articles in English Today debating the value of World Englishes.

Prof. Quirk argued that we must have a strong standard for English that does not allow for incorrect vocabulary or grammar.

Prof. Kachru argued that English must serve different purposes for millions of people around the world, and therefore, because a single standard is impossible, we must appreciate the variation in English worldwide.

Where do you stand?

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Writing a story with prepositions

Applying knowledge of prepositions to a short story

This lesson looks at how you might use your knowledge of prepositions and preposition phrases to write a short story aimed at children.

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