Home

Topic: Lessons

Classroom lesson plans and interactive smart board activities.

Genre of Newspaper Articles

Activities

Warmer 

Discuss with a partner: 

  • What was the last newspaper article you read? What was it about? 
  • Why do people read newspapers and news websites?  
  • What features do we expect to see in a newspaper article? Why are they used? 

Activity 1

Read Article A. Discuss the following questions: 

»

Genre of Recipes

Lesson Plan

Goals: 

  • Compare the discourse structure and register features of two recipes
  • Identify which grammatical features can be omitted for effect 
  • Analyse why recipes follow a predictable structure and set of features

Lesson Plan

Before this lesson, you may want to complete the lesson An Introduction to Genre, so that learners are familiar with the key terms discourse structure and register

»

Genre of Recipes

Activities

Warmer 

Discuss with a partner: 

  • What's your favourite meal? 
  • What recipes can you cook? 
  • What kind of information do recipes normally include?

Activity 1 

In pairs or small groups, read recipes A and B. Take turns describing each recipe, and then discuss with your partner: 

»

Homonyms (Stein)

Plan

Please note: there are two pages of activities for this lesson.

Activity 1

Show the learners the two example words. Ask them to discuss with a partner how many different meanings they can think of. In the next two slides, show possible solutions. 

Next, explain that words with multiple unrelated meanings are called homonyms. Ask learners to identify the word class of the two example words.  

»

Homonyms 1 (Stein)

Lesson

Objective

To identify the different meanings of homonyms of various word classes. 

Activity 1

Look at these two words. How many meanings can you think of for each? 

  • bank 
  • pupil

  • bank 
    1. an organization or a building that handles money and provides financial services. 
    2. the land on the side of a river or a lake

    »

    Homonyms 2 (Stein)

    Lesson

    Activity 3

    This lesson continues our look at homonyms. 

    Take for example the word fast

    How many different meanings and word classes can you think of?

    Look at these two sentences: 

    1. Katie works very fast
    2. Katie is a fast worker.

    They have very similar meanings, but in one sentence fast is an adverb and in the other an adjective.

    »

    Hyponymy (Stein)

    Plan

    Activity 1

    Show the learners the list of three nouns. Ask them to discuss the questions in pairs or small groups. 

    After a couple of minutes, reveal the focus of the lesson in the next slide: how nouns can relate to each other by being more general or specific. Use the example to demonstrate. Ask learners if they can think of any other examples. Don't worry if they struggle at this point, as they will see more throughout the lesson. 

    Ask learners to make notes on the new terminology, beacuse they will need it for the other activities. 

    »

    Hyponymy (Stein)

    Lesson

    Activity 1

    Look at these three nouns.

    What is the relationship between them? Can they be arranged into a logical order? 

    • dog
    • poodle
    • animal

    We can label nouns as general or specific. The specific noun is included in the general noun.

    »

    Identify the semantic role

    Exercise

    You will be given some sentences where two or three noun phrases are marked off with square brackets. For each sentence:

    • Identify the semantic roles of the noun phrases (agent, patient or recipient).
    • Write a different sentence to describe the same situation, where the same roles are expressed in different ways.

    Example:

    • [The people we were staying with] cooked [us] [a traditional Normandy dinner]. [S1A-009 #125, adapted]

    Roles:

    »

    Information structuring

    In this activity, students will be asked to find different ways to express a similar meaning. You may be surprised at just how many different ways you can find! The activity is based on an idea from Max Morenberg’s book Doing Grammar (3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 2002).

    »

    Information structuring: Activity

    • Sally was late. It annoyed the boss.

    • Sally was late and it annoyed the boss.
    • It annoyed the boss that Sally was late.
    • Sally’s lateness annoyed the boss.

    »

    KS1 noun phrase generator

    Use the interactive whiteboard to generate weird and wonderful noun phrases. 

    »

    Language and context

    Sometimes great humour is born from taking language out of context. This lesson explores that fact with some examples, and asks students to think of some of their own.

    »

    Linguistics of lies

    In this lesson, students explore the features of lies, from a linguistic perspective.

    Goals

    • Discuss the features of lies from a linguistic perspective.
    • Identify pronouns, negative emotional terms, sense terms and causal phrases.
    • Discuss the role of context in interpretation.
    • Present evidence to support an argument.

    Lesson Plan

    Background

    »

    Linguistics of lies: Activity

    Extract 1

    Hi Paul

    I’m not going to be able to make it in today as the boiler’s broken down and I need to wait for the repair man to come round.

    I’ll do what work I can here and email you the report for Thursday’s meeting.

    Mark

    Extract 2

    Dear Paul

    Sorry about this but I can’t make it in today. I’ve got a stinking cold and I’m feeling really rough. It came on over the weekend and the kids have been feeling pretty bad too.

    »

    Metaphor

    Understanding and analysing metaphor

    Goals

    • Understand the concept of metaphor and how they are formed
    • Analyse the use of metaphor in a real text

    Lesson Plan

    • Using the information and examples below, explain that metaphor is an everyday part of human communication
    • Use the examples of metaphor to explain how they are formed: by something abstract being understood in terms of something concrete
    • At this point, students could discuss any other examples of metaphor they can think of
    • Next, mo
    »

    Metaphor (Stein)

    Plan

    Activity 1

    Check your learners' prior knowledge by asking them to discuss the meaning of the term metaphor and to give examples. This can be done individually, and then check in small groups and/or whole class.

    Use the next slide to confirm the learners' answers. Next, ask if the learners can think of any other animal metaphors such as sly fox. Ask learners to share their ideas with each other and the whole class.

    »

    Metaphor (Stein)

    Lesson

    Activity 1

    What does the term metaphor mean?

    Can you think of an example? 

    A metaphor is when a word or phrase is used to suggest a resemblance to a another thing or action. 

    A metaphor uses language in a figurative sense. 

    When we call someone a sly fox we are implying that their behaviour is similar to a fox i.e. sneaky or crafty. 

    What other animal metaphors can you think of? 

    »

    Metaphor: Activity

    Analysing metaphor in political discourse

    Attached to this page are some extracts of a 2016 speech delivered by David Cameron after the UK voted to leave the European Union. For each extract, you will be asked to do two things:

    1) Work out what metaphor is being used. What is being understood in terms of what?

    2) Comment on why you think that metaphor is used. What purpose does it serve? What kind of meaning does it carry, in the wider context of the political situation in which the speech took place?

    You will see on the handout that one example has been done for you.

    »

    Metaphor: Introduction

    What is a metaphor? Introduction for the classroom activity

    Metaphor is often thought of as something that is confined to literary texts, but as we shall see, this really isn't the case.

    Everyday language is full of metaphor, and it is actually quite difficult to use language without it!

    Let's look at an example - the metaphor of LIFE IS A JOURNEY. (In linguistics, the standard way to show metaphor is by using capital letters). In this metaphor, the abstract concept of 'life' is understood as a concrete, physical 'journey'.

    This generates sentences such as:

    »

    Morphology - an introduction

    In this lesson, students explore word morphology. Morphology is an area of language study concerned with how words are formed. While syntax is about the larger structures formed when words are put together, morphology is about the structure within words.

    »

    Morphology - an introduction: Activity 1

    Activity 1: Finding word parts

    From the list below, pick out the words that are complex. Can you break them down into meaningful parts?

    1. bread
    2. sunshine
    3. fossil
    4. sleepwalker
    5. unhappy
    6. umbrella
    7. rebuild
    8. laughing

    There are some further questions on the next slide.

    Now look at the parts of the words that you have found. Which ones can be used on their own?

    »

    Morphology - an introduction: Activity 2

    Activity 2: Same word or different words?

    Would you say the following are different words or the same word?

    • hesitate, hesitates, hesitated, hesitating

    It depends what we mean by ‘word’! In one everyday sense, they are all different words.

    »

    Morphology - an introduction: Activity 3

    Activity 3: How many words?

    Look at the sentence below and answer the following questions:

    1. How many different words, in the sense of dictionary words, are there?
    2. Which items can be grouped together as forms of the same word?
    • I think teasing tigers is unwise, because I teased a tiger once and barely escaped alive.

     

    »

    Englicious contains many resources for English language in schools, but the vast majority of them require you to register and log in first. For more information, see What is Englicious?

    Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies