 Basic  Intermediate  Advanced

Lesson Plan
Business/Materials Lesson Objectives

Video beam Students will describe the principal characteristics of

people and objects in the past by using simple past
tense of verb to be in a short presentation about a
famous death character.

Warm-up and Objective Discussion

The class will start with an activity named taboo, in which one student with the board behind
will listen to the descriptions of one object or one person from the other students in the
class. Then, this student will try to guess what the object or the person is.
The teacher will talk about the importance of adjectives when making a description of an
object or a person. Then he will ask students to describe different objects and people in the
class.

Next, he will tell the students that during the lesson they will continue making different
descriptions but of objects and people in the past. The teacher will ask for examples of a
famous death characters and tell students that at the end of the lesson they will present
information about an old famous character.

Instruct and Model ❑ R ❑ W ❑ L ❑ S

To start with the instruction the teacher will show some examples of descriptions of objects
and people in present and in past tense on the board. Then he will ask students to discuss
with the person beside what is the difference between the two examples given by the
teacher and then ask them to recognize what is the rule for the simple past tense of verb to
be.

The teacher will exemplify the use of present and past tense with the following anecdote. “I
used to wear very serious t-shirts when I started working in an institute. People often told me
I looked very serious, classic or old. Then I started to use more colorful shirts and people
started to tell me that I looked more relaxed and kind of my age, more current fashion, so I
continued using some shirts and with accessories. At this point people told me I looked even
younger, stylish, and futuristic.”

This way the teacher will explain that using verb to be is, like in the story, using shirts. That
when using present it is only necessary to put on current and fashionable shirts like (is, are
and am), that when they talk about the past it is only necessary to use more serious and
formal shirts like (was and were) and when using future it is only necessary to use some
accessories with normal clothes (will).

Then the teacher will start giving an example of a description of a famous death character. He
will start describing the character physically and then he will describe personality and other
features. Then the teacher will ask students to work in pairs and help continue describing the
same character from the example given by the teacher.
After that, the teacher will tell students that they are going to do something similar with the
character they like the most, taking into account the model given by the teacher.

This instruction is sticky since first is very clear, second, it is given in a simple and familiar
language, and third it is presented aiming to get students imagination and memory for the
content. It is also expected to be usable and durable, because descriptions is a basic but
important topic for communication.

This instruction and modeling is going to keep the class conversational too. Since the very
beginning warming up activities the students will start communicating among them in a
simple way but applying the content of the class. During the modeling, students have to
discuss and find possible descriptions for the character given by the teacher in the example,
so they are going to be the main characters in their process.

Guided Practice ❑ R ❑ W ❑ L ❑ S

As the teacher has already given one model example for the students to do the activity he
will lead the practice asking individually who they would like to talk about in the
presentation. Then the teacher will write the names of the options given by the students and
help the ones who didn’t choose yet.
The teacher will start one sentence with each of the options and students should complete
the example. If one student said Celia Cruz, the teacher will ask students whether to use Was
or Were, and then he will ask them to complete with and adjective to describe the character.
This is the guided practice activity.

For less guided practice activity, as the teacher has already explained and given a model for
the activity, he will ask students to gather in groups of 4. They should look for a picture of
their character on their cellphones and in groups they will start comparing and describing
together each other ́s picture. The teacher will go around the groups and observe the
different interactions. He will give advice to the ones who need it

Independent Practice ❑ R ❑ W ❑ L ❑ S
For the independent practice, the teacher will tell the students that they will start working
individually in a short presentation where they have to create a full description of the
character they chose and then present to the class. The teacher will tell students that for the
presentation he expects the students to describe the character physically, about the
personality and about other important aspects like (origin, nationality, occupation and
profession) in at least 4 sentences each one and using past tense of verb to be.
Depending on the time for the class the teacher will instruct whether the full activity is for
the same lesson or instead they prepare the presentation on the lesson day and present the
next lesson. Anyways, the teacher will observe and help students while they are working on
the preparation of their presentations.

Assessment ❑ R ❑ W ❑ L ❑ S