Tag Archives: upper intermediate
This is a…
What is it if it’s not a pipe? Could it be an elvish golf club, a tiny unfinished old-fashioned periscope, a fancy straw for drinking ale, part of a faucet, a teensy weensy watering can? Course it could, if you can forget the boring, sensible, conventional use and think sideways. This little warmer requires students […]
A low-prep, low-tech, effective game for revision
In this activity, pairs or small groups of students compete against other groups to answer written questions. It could be called a low tech version of a Socrative quiz. It’s most easily done with a whiteboard and projector but it could certainly be done with a blackboard instead. You just need a list of 8-12 […]
Have Something Done – a Lesson plan
I recently applied for the DELTA course, and one of the tasks was to write a B2 level lesson plan for the language point have something done. I’ve always found this one a difficult one to teach, especially with teenagers, because most of the activities I’ve come across in books are about doing up your house which isn’t as […]
Defining relative clauses
This is a communicative, personalised activity for introducing defining relative clauses. Ask your students to write the numbers 1-8 on their paper. Next to no. 1 tell them to write down a place where they like to eat. They should write the name only. You are going to read out 7 similar categories and they […]
Stop/try/remember to say “banana”
Verb patterns can often be confusing for students and some verbs like stop, try and remember are even more so, given that the meaning of the verb changes depending on whether it’s followed by the gerund or the infinitive. I developed this activity for my FCE students to practise using the different meanings after I […]
All I want for Christmas is… Now with elementary YL version too!
Everyone loves presents. But what’s the one thing you REALLY want? And can you make a good case for it to Santa Claus? This lesson involves some Christmas vocab, open-cloze, listening to a song, pronunciation and speaking and culminates with giving a convincing speech to Santa Claus about the one thing you really want for […]
A Hive of Activities 