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People I know A1

People I know A1

  • Level: A1
  • Topic: Describing people
  • Learning Outcome: Can use adjectives to describe appearance & personality
  • Grammar: Present Simple Information Questions
Key Language:
Adjectives to describe personality & character: friendly, clever, famous, popular, active, outgoing, lazy, eats a lot, sings beautifully, good at music, good at numbers, studies a lot, good at swimming
 

Mandy, Will, and Lisa are feeling bored. Mandy has an idea to play her favourite game! They must guess who she is thinking of by asking questions about their age, hobbies, interests, and looks. Can you guess who Mandy is thinking of? Play along and see if you can guess!

Transcript

People I know – Transcript
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Aim of Activity

10 - 15 minutes

To check learners’ understanding of the video. 

Steps for Students

  1. Work individually. 
  2. Read the information about Lisa and Boosty. 
  3. Correct the wrong information. Talk to your partner. 
  4. Check your answers. 
  1. Put learners in pairs. 
  2. Share the task with the learners. 
  3. Ask the learners to read the information about Lisa and Boosty and correct what is wrong. 
  4. Check the answers with the whole class. 
  5. (Optional) Ask the learners to put the activity away.
    Ask Learner As to say what they remember about Lisa.
    Ask Learner Bs to say what they remember about Lisa.  

 

Face-to-face class: 

  • print worksheet for learners or project it on an interactive whiteboard 

 

Online class: 

  • share worksheet on the screen of teacher’s computer OR 
  • share the worksheet with individual students e.g. on a Google Drive

 

TIP!

  • Learners may need to watch the video more than once. 
  • In an online class, learners can be encouraged to copy the table in their notebook. 
  • To demonstrate the activity, do the first example together. 
  • To make the activity more communicative, ask learners to talk to each other when they are doing the task. 
  • Before checking the answers with the whole class, allow learners to check their answers with another pair /small group of learners. 

 

Lisa  Boosty 
Age: 10  Age: twenty 
Favourite Subject: art  Country: China 
Good at: music, maths  Good at: swimming 
Personality: shy, friendly, clever  Personality: active, outgoing, lazy 
Hobby: take photos, walk in the park  Interests: climb trees, hip-hop, dancing 
Appearance: tall, slim, long brown hair, brown eyes  Appearance: short, chubby, good-looking 

Activity attachment

Activity 1
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Aim of Activity

10 - 15 minutes

To provide learners with controlled practice of asking and answering Wh–questions. 

Steps for Students

  1. Work in pairs or small groups.
  2. Click the link your teacher has got.
  3. Put the words in the questions in the correct order.
  4. Write the correct questions in your notebook.
  5. Ask and answer the questions in pairs. 
  6. Tell your teacher what your partner said. 
  1. Put learners in pairs or small groups. 
  2. Share the task with the learners. 
  3. Ask the learners to reorder the words in the questions given and write them in their notebook.  
  4. Ask the learners to take it in turns to ask and answer the questions.  
  5. Check the activity with the whole class. 

 

Face-to-face class:  

  • Use a projector to do the task as a whole class activity OR 
  • Provide tablets for groups of learners to do the task in groups. 

 

Online lesson: 

  • Use a computer to share the task online: ACTIVITY 2

TIP!

  • During the activity, ask the learners to copy the correct questions in their notebook. 
  •  After doing the online activity, nominate some learners to share with the class what they have learnt about their partner(s). Fast finishers can be asked to write 2-3 sentences about their partner based on their answers. 
  •  As a follow-up activity, learners can write sentences about their partner. 
    •  Note that it is possible to switch templates using the same content by clicking one of the templates (e.g. Anagram) on the right of the  screen. 

 

  1. How old are you? 
  2. What is your favourite subject? 
  3. What are you good at? 
  4. What do you do in your free time? 
  5. What is your favourite kind of music? 
  6. What do you look like? 
  7. What are you like? 

Aim of Activity

10 - 15 minutes

To provide learners with an opportunity to use the target language in a real-life context. 

Steps for Students

  1. Work in small groups. 
  2. Student A: Show your picture of a person. 
  3. Other Students: Ask and answer questions about the person. 
  4. Students take turns and continue with the activity.
  1. Put learners in small groups. 
  2. Demonstrate the activity by showing your learners a photo of  someone you like. Ask the learners to ask you questions to find out as much information about the person in the photo as possible. 
  3. Ask the learners to take it in turns to show their photo to their classmates. 
  4. Ask the learners looking at the photo to ask questions to find out as much information about the person in the photo as they can. 
  5. Check the activity by nominating some of the learners to talk about their photo or another learner’s photo. 

 

TIP!

❗❗❗Note that to do this activity, ask your learners to bring a picture/photo of a person they like (a family member, a friend or a famous person) to class. The image can be a real photograph, on their mobile device or from a magazine. ❗❗❗ 

  • Before the activity, you may find it useful to revise the questions that can be used to ask about people in Activity 2. 
  • During the activity, monitor the learners and take notes of common errors for error correction right after the activity or at the beginning of the next lesson. 
  • At feedback stage, nominate learners to share with the whole class what they learnt about their partner. 

n/a

Aim of Activity

10 - 15 minutes

To raise learners’ awareness of word stress. 

Steps for Students

  1. Click here to start: ACTIVITY 4
  2. Categorise the adjectives from the video according to the number of syllables they have and where the stress is.
  1. Show learners 3 words from the video: short, friendly, favourite 
  2. Ask how many syllables there are in each word.
    1 syllable   2 syllables   3 syllables
           O                OO                 OOO
        short          friendly       favourite
  3. Say the words and ask learners if they hear a difference between the (length and loudness of the) syllables. Draw learners’ awareness to word stress.
    (The stressed syllable (highlighted in bold below) is longer and louder than unstressed syllables.)
      O                O       o            O   o   o
    short           friendly       favourite 
  4. Ask learners to categorise the adjectives from the video according to the number of syllables they have and where the stress is. Share the link to the activity by clicking: ACTIVITY 4

    • Learners can do the activity:
      • as a whole class on an interactive whiteboard.
      • in pairs/small groups using tablets.
      • individually on their mobile devices.
      • on the whiteboard.
  5. Check the activity playing the recording below. Allow learners to correct their answers if needed.
  6. Play the recording again for learners to listen to and repeat the adjectives.  

TIP! 

  • If learners work individually, in pairs or small groups, allow them to check their answers in pairs or with other groups before whole class feedback. 
  • As a follow-up activity, ask learners to work in pairs/small groups and say sentences about their friends in and out of class using the adjectives from the task. 

O: short, bored, good, tall, slim, shy 

Oo: friendly, famous, chubby, active, lazy, clever 

Ooo: favourite, popular, beautiful 

oOo: outgoing, good-looking 

Aim of Activity

15 - 20 minutes

To provide learners with an example of a freer practice activity in the context of asking and answering Wh-questions to describe people. 

Steps for Students

  1. Work in pairs or small groups.  
  2. Choose a boy or girl from the picture but don’t tell anyone who it is.  
  3. Your classmate(s) will ask you questions to find out who you have chosen.  
  4. Use the pictures and words under the pictures to ask and answer the questions. 
  1. Put learners in pairs or small groups. 
  2. Share the task with the learners. 
  3. Ask the learners to take it in turns to choose a boy or a girl from the picture and ask questions to find out who it is (using Both the pictures and the words given).  
  4. Check the answers with the whole class.

Face-to-face class: 

  • print worksheet for learners or project it on an interactive whiteboard 

Online class: 

  • share worksheet on the screen of the teacher’s computer OR 
  • share the worksheet with individual students e.g. on a Google Drive

 

TIP! 

  • Before the speaking activity, demonstrate the task by doing the first example together as a whole class. Encourage learners to ask their questions to find out which character the teacher has chosen from the worksheet. 
  • During the speaking activity, monitor the learners and take notes of common errors for error correction right after the activity or at the beginning of the next lesson. 
  • After the activity, the teacher can nominate some of the learners to share with the class what they learnt about their partner. 
  • As a follow-up activity, 
    • learners can be asked to describe a character from the worksheet for others to guess who the character is. 
    • learners can be asked to describe a character in writing as their homework. In the following lesson, learners can work in groups.    Learners can be asked to place what they wrote in each group on a table or stick them on the wall in the classroom. Each learner in the group reads all the descriptions and matches the descriptions to the characters. 

n/a

Activity attachment

Activity 5
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The BOOST Project (Building Open Online Series for Teaching) aims to improve the digital readiness of teachers of English as a foreign language to students aged 8 -14 by providing an open-access series of engaging native-speaker content videos linked with a Resource Pack of ready-made activities to stimulate production of the language in online learning.

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