Lesson Planning: 50 Nifty United States

I hate to admit it (or do I?) but this incredibly simple, yet effective lesson was born out of complete laziness. It was originally created as day 2 of the USA intro lesson plan, but it is not at all dependent on that lesson.

I've done it for 7th graders, but really it doesn't involve too much language abilities, so you can do it at any level that is just starting to learn the states. It is just a fun lesson on the States.

We start by listing as many states as possible from memory as a class. I really stress no books or maps, because the whole lesson is sort of dependent on them not being able to name all 50 at first. I have a nice little worksheet for them to write on, but unfortunately I don't have it saved on my comp, so I can't upload the file for you. However, it is really basic: 50 blanks on one side (with very basic written instructions) and an unlabeled map of the 50 states on the other.

Like I said, the rest of the lesson is pretty pointless if they name all 50 states at first, my closest call was a class who got to 45. The general average has been about 30 though.

After you've exhausted all the states you know from memory I play them the most amazing song ever. That's right, School House Rock's "Fifty Nifty United States". The kids usually love it because it's super corny. And I always tell them that it's ok to dance to the first bit. So then they listen to the song as it lists all 50 states. I usually do the listening twice. After each time we see how many new state names we heard and add them to the list.

If, after 2 listenings, they are only missing 1 or 2, I say the states for them (partly because I'm a show off and partly because the song can be difficult to understand). But I like to make it exciting for them, so I ask the class who thinks I can name all 50 states from memory. I had one very faithful class who all thought I could, but the rest are usually pretty split. Of course, I've had this song memorized since the 3rd grade, so it's a breeze.

Once we've named all 50 states I tell them I have a new challenge for them: a race. Me against the class. We see who can fill in the states on the map on the back the fastest. But I tell them, they get to use their books (which has a map of the US), but I don't! I've honestly never had more silent classes than during this part. They are so focused

and determined. But I usually win. 

I fill out my answers on the overhead and turn it on when I'm done and ask them to check my work. Then, if there is still time left over, we label more things as a class: Washington, D.C.; the Mississippi River; the Great Lakes; the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; the Gulf of Mexico and Canada and Mexico.

Like I said, super simple, but between the song and the race, the kids really get into it!

Lesson Planning: Intro to USA unit

The 7th grade at my school has been starting their USA unit, which means I've been in a LOT of 7th grade classes these past couple weeks.  This is a simple lesson, but it's been a lot of fun!

We start by making a mind map (I've come to love a good mind map this year) of anything and everything that the students think of when they think of the USA. The picture on the right is what a typical USA mind map has looked like in my classes. Those are all actual responses I've gotten. (Justin Bieber gets a question mark because he's canadian)

Then we go to the book (which I'm sorry I can't scan, but this part is easily adapted by just picking photos yourself and writing captions to go with them). Where they have to match the photos with the corresponding captions. We do this together as a class.

After they've matched all the captions to the photos in the book, I ask them to pick a word from our mind map that we made at the beginning. They can pick any word they want, and they have to draw a picture of this word (or what it makes them think of) and write at least 3 sentences explaining why they drew what they drew. 

I like to save about 10 minutes at the end of class and go through the drawings and have them read their sentences out loud. I've found the best way to do this is ask "who drew a picture of ?" then they all hold up their pics and one kid reads theirs. This is the most effective way to avoid having 10 pictures of the Hollywood sign read. 

Like I said, simple, but the kids really seem to enjoy the chance to be a little creative and it's also been enjoyable for me, because you get something new every time!

Lesson Planning: Calendars and Dates

This lesson is for beginners. I've done in about 4 different 5th grade classes in the past week - it's been a pretty big hit!

To begin, I write 7 dates on the board. I don't tell the kids what they are - or even that they're dates, just simply write, for example, "08/05/1987" (keep in mind the European system is dd/mm/yyyy). The dates I use are things like my birthday, the day I graduated college, the day I graduated high school, the first day I ever went to school (yeah ok, I just picked a day in the August 1992, it's not actually legit...) and various other semi-real important dates. I think I have 7 total. Then I ask the students if they know what the numbers on the board are. After they figure it out, I tell them they are all important dates to me, but I won't tell them what they are until they can say the dates correctly. We move to part two.

For this, I ask for 12 volunteers. The come to the front of the room and I gather them in close like I'm telling them very important secret info. This part can get really rowdy if the 12 volunteers don't stay quiet, so I find if you make them feel like they're in the cool club getting

top secret instructions, they're more likely to follow it. I hand them out signs with the names of

the months on and tell them they have to be absolutely silent

and not help the rest of the class.

Then the rest of the class is instructed to come put the kids with months in order. It's a good

way to get the class moving and feeling involved. Once they've got the months all lined up, we go down the line and each kid wearing the sign (oh yeah, they hang around their necks, they're pretty cool) has to say the name of their month in English and tell us what it is in German.

Then I take 7 new volunteers, rinse and repeat,

do the same thing only with the days of the

week.

After we've gone through the months and the days, we talk about ordinal numbers. I tell them we can't just say "today is January nineteen" we have to have a special way to say it. I begin with the rule - just add "th" to the end of the numbers. So I give them a few normal numbers and ask them what we would say. After 2 or 3, when they seem to have caught on, we do 1, 2, and 3. (I found it's good to ask them what first, second and third are in German, because I've had quite a few students who thought second was "Sekunde" which is only second in the time sense). Basically this part goes on forever. It's a lot of repeating and and writing on the board and repeating, but the important part is to have them say it everytime.

We then go over the construction of how to say a date/write a date. I'm following the British way at this point, because that's what's in their book and I don't want to confuse them. So I write out "the 19th of January" emphasizing the "the-day-of-month" structure. So that we can now go around saying our birthdays. This goes on for a while. Once we're done, we go over how to write ordinal numbers, without writing out the whole word "8th, 12th, 31st..." (that's usually pretty quick)

The next part is fun for the kids, but not necessary as it takes up a good 10 minutes: I divide them up by birth-months handing back out the month signs from the beginning, then they all have to write on their sign their name and birthday. For example: Emily - 8th May 1987 (yes, that's the British way to write it).

Quickly we go over years (it's pretty simple so it just doesn't take very long). Finally, at the end we go over the dates from the beginning.

I've had a lot of fun doing this lesson, and the kids all seem to really enjoy it!

Lesson Planning: Civil Rights

This lesson is 3 parts that run smoothly together, but can also be done separately as needed. I've done it a few times now, using several different combinations of the three parts. It was originally made for a 10th grade class but can be pretty much used for any level 9th and up, I think.

As a general introduction to the topic I start with a two pictures on the overhead. Rosa Parks on a bus and Martin Luther King, Jr. giving his speech at the march on Washington. I don't tell them anything about the pictures, just ask them to describe them. Where are they? how many people are there? Is it an active photo? etc... Usually they are able to recognize MLK, so then I tell them that both photos have to do with the Civil Rights Movement and ask them to compare and contrast them and think about what each might have had to do with Civil Rights. At the end I tell who each person is and just a brief description of where/what each picture is. This can take anywhere from 5 - 15 minutes, depending on how in detail you want to go.

the first major part of the lesson is a matching exercise of different Civil Rights terms - people and events (you can download the worksheet I made here). The reason this part is so condensed is because I originally had to fit everything in one 40 minute class period, so this was the most efficient way to cover as much as possible. I gave the class about 10 minutes to go through the worksheet in pairs and finish the matching. Then, when we went over the answers, I would add a little more detail to each answer. This can take anywhere between 15-20 minutes or more, depending mostly on how much time you give them to work on their own.

The second part is deals with the "I have a dream speech" by MLK which I have on the same worksheet as the matching. I've done this part differently a few times. The first time, we were running short on time, so I read the speech to the class, but I prefer to have the class read it out loud. Usually going around one section per person. Then as a class we discuss what is meant by "dream". We record a few ideas on the board and then I split them into groups (this just depends on the size of the class, but I prefer not to have anymore than 5 people in a group) and assign each group a different section of the speech. I give them about 10 - 15 minutes and have them "translate" the speech into simple English. When they finish, they write their newly translated versions on the board and we read the "new" speech together as a class and discuss if whether or not we agree.

The third part uses the song "A Dream" from the movie Freedom Writers. Never saw the movie, but the song is basically a modern rap version of the Speech, so it worked great! I typed out the lyrics for them, but left holes in it (the underlined words are the ones I took out), for them to fill in as they listened. I've done this lesson once by leading with the song, so we discussed what it could possibly be about, but that question is pretty irrelevant when they already know the topic is Civil Rights. So I give them another 5 minutes to look through the song lyrics and the actual speech to be able to compare and contrast. At the end we record what we've found on the board. This part lasts about 15-20 minutes by itself, or if combined with just the reading of the speech it can last about 25 minutes.

Since the three parts of this lesson don't all fit into one 40 minute lesson I usually break it up and do it over two or three, or I just do the speech and the song and assign the matching as homework! Feel free to take, tweak or borrow from any part of it!

Lesson Planning: Halloween

This lesson was prepared for a 6th grade class at a beginner level.


The thing I love most about working with these 10 to 12 year old kids, is that they have only been taking English for about a year and still I could carry out the lesson almost entirely in English. I'm still amazed at how quickly younger children are able to comprehend a foreign language!


This lesson was divided into two activities, with two different sets of vocab. The first was a worksheet I copied from another teacher, so unfortunately I can't post it here :-\ buuuuuut, it's pretty basic so I'll just give you the details.


it is basically a kid-crossword puzzle. There are 12 pictures and the children have to write the names of each picture in the corresponding blanks. The words were: Sweets (you know, the British word for candy), cauldron, spider, cat, pumpkin, ghost, star, witch, fire, web, bat, and skeleton. First we just looked at the pictures on the overhead and learned the vocabulary. I wrote all the words on the board as they answered. Then I turned the overhead off, but left the vocab words up and handed out the worksheet for them to fill in. They were given between 5 and 10 minutes to work together and fill it out. At the end, their answers revealed the hidden answer: Trick or treat!


After this we did what I like to call an interactive story. I wrote a simple ghost story for them that focused on six words: haunted, midnight, scary, spooky, ghost and wind/windy, and each word is assigned as sound (and yes, I named the main character after my brother...). Before reading the story we went through each word. I wrote them on the board and had them give me the German word for each. Then as a class we practiced our different noises for each word (before telling them which word they went with). Then I divided the class into 6 groups and assigned them each a word and told them what noise they got to make. (haunted: tapping on the desk, midnight: a single clap, scary: Ahh! *but you have to be sure to tell them only to do it quietly*, spooky: Ooooo, ghost: Boo!, and wind/windy: shhhhhh). then I read through the story with them making their different sounds.

I've done this lesson 3 or 4 times this week, and in some of the classes it didn't take the whole period, so an easy solution is to do the story again, but reassign the words.


They really seemed to get into the story part, and I think it is good because it keeps them focused while you read and they have practice listening to hear their word! good times. I will definitely do the interactive story thing again, it is easily adapted to any theme!

I don't have many older kids this week, but for a "fun" halloween lesson for them, I've just been filling out a Halloween madlib as a class. Simple and fun!

Lesson Planning: Everyday English

This lesson was prepared for a 12th grade class at an advanced level. The first activity is easily adjusted for almost any level, but the second activity works best at the intermediate-advanced level.

The goal of this lesson was to focus on everyday English, or practical English. So instead of just working on academic English (analyzing a text, having a debate, etc.) we worked on simple English used in normal situations (making a reservation, returning something at the store, etc.). I used put together two different activities for this lesson.

To begin with, I wrote short dialogues (there were 16 students in the class, this lesson works best with even numbers, but can be tweaked for an odd number) having to do with different "real life" situations, each dialogue was between a "speaker 1" and "speaker 2." I then divided the dialogues, so that for each scenario there was one sheet with only speaker 1 parts on it and one sheet with only speaker 2 parts on it. I passed out the parts randomly and had the students walk around the classroom and read their dialogues with each other, trying to figure out which speaker 1s and which speaker 2s belonged together.

Once they found their partners, we went through the class, reading the dialogues out loud (I wasn't actually planning to do this, but it didn't take as long as I had thought to find their partners, so I was killing some time). The students who did not read the dialogue were then asked to identify the situation. And, of course, I asked for any vocabulary questions after each dialogue.

Then, still with their partners, I handed them out new scenarios that had to do with their original dialogue (for example, the group who's original dialogue dealt with making a reservation, now had to write a dialogue to change a reservation). I gave them about 15 minutes to write a new dialogue based on the scenario they were given. After they finished writing their own dialogue, they passed it to the group on their right, and we read through all the new dialogues out loud.

After having done this lesson now, I definitely think I would change/rearrange parts of it, but I think the main point still came across!

Lesson Planning: Smart Machines

This lesson was prepared for a 12th grade class at an advanced level, however, I think it can be easily adapted to work for most any grade or level.

For this lesson I used a text from the book (link to the text below) about smart appliances. It was written in a very informal style and used quite a bit of humor. With this sort of tone already set by the class, I didn't want to dull it down with just another boring old question and answer session, so I tried to think of something a little more interactive and exciting for the students to accompany the text.

To begin the lesson, I had the students read the article, "Remote Control" by Dave Barry, aloud as a class. The article is fairly short, so this only took about 7-8 minutes. I prefer reading texts out loud as a class because it is much harder for students to get away with pretending to know a word, or not realize they are mispronouncing/misunderstanding it. I also think it's just good practice in general for pronunciation - especially for students who otherwise don't speak in class too often. I also end any reading exercise by taking vocabulary questions straight away.

The text came with 4 or 5 discussion questions, so I took the first one ("Describe Barry's attitude to appliance manufacturers. Use quotations from the article to illustrate your answer.") and gave the students 5 minutes to work in pairs to answer the question. After they were given time to prepare their answers, I took examples from the class. Altogether, we probably spent about 10 minutes on this part of the lesson.

Through out the text were marked vocabulary words. I chose 5 (not for the number, but because they were the only ones that really worked with the activity) and wrote them on the board. In this case, the words were: at random, to decipher something, to disable something, appliance, and foolproof. I then called on students to define the vocabulary in their own words (this wasn't too difficult as they had the dictionary definition on their handout with the article). After defining the vocab they were given the following assignment:

In groups of 2, create a new smart appliance. Your appliance can be a modification of one that already exists, or something brand new. It doesn't have to be realistic, but it has to have a function. You must draw a picture of your new appliance, give it a name, and write an advertisement for it describing it's function and trying to sell it to the class using at least 3 of the 5 vocabulary words listed on the board.

So for another 15 minutes or so, they split into partners and worked on creating their own machines. During this part I just floated around the groups proof-reading sentences, helping with vocabulary and encouraging creative ideas. After they all finished creating their machines, they came to the front of the class, one at a time, and tried to "sell" their product to the class.

Overall, the students responded really well to the activity and came up with some pretty creative ideas (which I wrote about in an earlier post).