Humans of London: Rebecca's Story

After a long break (work, work, work), I'm back to share another activity that I created for my pre-intermediate/intermediate students to practice the past simple and the past continuous tenses.  The activity worked really well with my adult students but I'm sure your teens will enjoy it too.

Since my lesson inspired by Humans of New York has been quite popular (if you haven't checked it out yet, click here ), I decided to prepare something similar, but this time I looked for inspiration on Humans of London . 

To warm everybody up, ask your students if they know what Humans of New York/London/Amsterdam are. Have a quick discussion about the photoblogs and ask if there is any story your students would like to share if they were approached by a journalist working for any of these blogs. 

Tell your students they are going to read a story told by Rebecca- a middle-aged woman from London. Show them these two photos of Rebecca  and ask them to describe her appearance and think of some personality traits she might have (always elicit why). 

Now on the whiteboard write down these verbs: have, work, can, grow, cry, divorce, break up, run, lose, go, meet. Tell your students that all these verbs appear in Rebecca's story. Divide your students in pairs/small groups and ask them to write a story about Rebecca using the above verbs in the past simple and the past continuous forms.You might need to go over the forms with your students beforehand if their level is weaker. Give them enough time to complete the task and compare the stories they came up with. Correct where necessary. 

Then, give each student a copy of Rebecca's story which they have to complete with the right form of the verbs. Depending on their level, you might need to pre-teach some vocabulary. Give them enough time to do the task and check it together. Compare the real story to theirs and ask them what they think of it. 

Hope the lesson works for you as well as it did for me :) 

That was rubbish!!

Hello again on this lovely Sunday!

I think I've already mentioned that my students love music and they like it when I bring songs to class. However, it's never easy to make everybody happy with my song choices. Even though I always go for a track that is on the list made by my students (I frequently ask them to make a list of songs they like) ,there are always a few grumpy kids who absolutely despise the number/artist I decide to work with.

I'm hoping to make everybody happy with this lesson. The kids who enjoy certain songs will be able to listen to them while the ones who hate these tracks will have a unique opportunity to criticise them as much as they wish to.

In this lesson your students will watch a video of a famous talent show judge being very harsh to a few contestants. They will firstly learn a few ways of giving very mean feedback. Then, they will study a few ways of making criticism sound softer and more tactful. In the end they'll participate in a role-play in which they'll listen to various songs and take turns to be crude or sensitive talent show judges.

First of all, show your students this PowerPoint presentation and ask them if they know the people in the photos and elicit if they have anything in common. The photos show famous talent show judges known for being very honest but rude in their comments (Simon Cowell, Gordon Ramsay, Chicote). I currently teach in Spain so I included Chicote: a celebrity chef who doesn't beat around the bush when he criticises others. You might want to include some photos of other mean celebrities who your students are familiar with.

Then, tell your students to work in pairs, watch Top 10 Simon Cowell Insults and write as many mean comments as possible. Have your students share their notes but don't correct them yet.
Now give everybody this handout and get them to watch the video again in order to complete exercise 1. At this stage, depending on your students' level, you might need to explain a few words like horrendous, delusional, edge, charisma, utterly, hammy or rubbish.

After correcting exercise 1, tell your students that Simon Cowell isn't the most tactful man around and there are other, nicer ways of expressing one's dislike. Have your students work on exercise 2 and make sure you point out and explain how to use the understatements. Give them more examples if necessary.

Now your students are ready to do exercise 3 in which they have to work in pairs/individually (it's up to you), and use the expressions from the previous exercise to make Simon Cowell's statements (exercise 1) sound more sensitive.

In the last activity divide your students into two groups: group 1 will be harsh judges, group 2 should be tactful judges. Play a song (choose one beforehand) and give your students some time to come up with feedback according to their roles. Remind them to look at different aspects of the song: lyrics, melody, video, etc. Monitor to make sure they use the studied expressions correctly before they act out their roles. You can then play another song and get your students to swap roles. Alternatively, you can divide your students into three groups and add a group of friendly judges who love and compliment the song. Remember to pre-teach some useful expressions to help them give very positive feedback. 

The choice of songs depends on your students. I always pick the most controversial artists that I know my students either love or hate, for example Justin Bieber or One Direction. It's always a good idea to suss out your student's music tastes before the lesson.

This lesson might be followed up by a review writing activity in which students need to review a book/place/film, etc. they don't like: this might be ideal for those of your students who are preparing for more advanced Cambridge exams.

I prepared this lesson for my intermediate and upper-intermediate teenage students but I'll give it a go with my adult students, too. This lesson contains some harsh, offensive language so it's very important that your students are mature and responsible enough to know that their words might be hurtful so they need to think carefully before they speak out. I wouldn't conduct this lesson with my younger, less mature students. 


Let me know if there's anything you would change in this lesson!

A wee treat for Ed Sheeran fans ↓

This quick activity is based on Ed Sheeran's "Shape of you". My teenage students are absolutely crazy about this song and have been nagging me to work on it for ages.

Apart from completing a typical gap fill task, students write a short story using some words and phrases from the song.

To begin with, students work on the first exercise in order to get familiarised with some vocabulary from the song.

Then, they listen to the song and complete the gaps in the lyrics with the words from the first activity.

 After discussing the song and the lyrics (make sure you explain the underlined words/phrases and any words your students don't know), students draw a piece of paper with a character's description written on it. They need to work individually or in pairs and write a short story about the character. They need to use at least 6 words or/and phrases from the song.I always encourage my students to use the words that are new to them. 

In the end students swap their stories and looking at the list of all the characters they try to guess who's described in the text. Encourage them to justify their choices and ask authors of the text to confirm/reveal their true characters. 

I came up with this activity with my intermediate students in mind but it can be easily adapted to higher levels by not giving them the first activity and asking them to fill in the gaps without help. 

Downloadable worksheet  → Ed Sheeran "Shape of you" activity


For other ideas how to use songs in teaching and more downloadable worksheets click here

Songs!

Do you like using songs in your lessons? Are you fed up with gap fills?? Me too! Here are some links with plenty of great ideas to engage your students in fun activities involving music:


14 song-based lesson plans and activities → A great article on using music in teaching by Onthesamepage ELT;

Beyond Gap Fills → ways of exploiting songs in language teaching;

Using music and songs → an interesting article by British Council;

The Language Gym → a recommendable article by Dr Gianfranco Conti;

Voices → another useful article by BC;

• Some gap fill worksheets for your teenage/adult students: 

Ed Sheeran 'Shape of you'

Amy Winehouse 'Valerie' 

Bruno Mars 'Just the way you are'

Cher 'If I could turn back time'

David Guetta 'Titanium' 

Ed Sheeran 'Thinking out loud' 

Gotye 'Somebody that I used to know' 

Johnny Cash 'She used to love me a lot' 

Avicii 'Hey Brother' 

Bruno Mars ' Locked out of heaven' 

Justin Timberlake 'Can't stop the feeling' 

Keane 'Somewhere only we know' 

Olly Murs 'Wrapped up' 

Rihanna 'Stay' 

Taylor Swift 'We are never ever getting back together' 

• Some songs with mistakes which your students need to find and correct: 

Coldplay 'Adventure of a lifetime'



I'll be updating this post with more ideas and worksheets in the future so make sure you come back to read it :)