Proficiency-based lesson plan on weather terms

Objectives

1. Students will recall names of seasonal clothing from previous lesson with 80% accuracy.

2. Students will distinguish between weather-related terms with 90% accuracy.

Materials

This lesson is designed for a low English proficiency class.

Context- instructor enlists students' help in preparing for a voyage.

*Presentation/Warm-up (10 minutes)

Review of clothing terms, introduction of weather-related terms. Instructor is preparing for a trip, but wants to make sure they are prepared for any type of weather. Introduction of weather terms with visual cues and solicitation of ideas for what they should bring (i.e. "What should I take if it's hot?" "Take a tee-shirt, shorts, and sunglasses.")

Attention (10 minutes)

Instructor shows photos (or ads) of their imaginary destination(s) and talks about what the weather is like in the photo. Keywords: hot, warm, cool, cold, freezing, sunny, windy, icy, rain(y), and snow(y). If many pictures are available, use several pictures to illustrate the same words. If only a few are available, cycle through them, progressively eliciting more student response.

*Co-construction (15-20 minutes)

Students are divided into teams and invited to help choose clothing appropriate to the weather for the instructor's children. A member of each team goes to the board, listen to a short weather forecast, and "dress" the children cutouts with clothing appropriate to that forecast. The first team to dress their child appropriately gets a point, and other rounds are played until everyone has had a turn.

Expansion (15 minutes)

Students take part in a discussion about what the weather is like in their country of origin during the various seasons.

Questions? Comments? Email me at jaldrich@rica.net

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