Every December we produce a lesson plan based on the John Lewis Christmas advert and this year’s offering features a dog called Buster, a trampoline and an assortment of wild animals. The lesson is suitable for teens and adults, upper-intermediate (B2) and above, and includes speculation, observation and vocabulary to describe sounds.
Display this word cloud or make your own at http://www.wordle.net. Tell students that it contains the lyrics of a well-known song. Give them a minute to try and identify the song.
STEP 2
Display the second word cloud, which contains the song title. Did they get it right?
STEP 3
Tell them to draw a grid four squares by four squares. They choose sixteen words from the cloud and write one word in each square of their grid.
STEP 4
Play the video – sound only, with the screen blank. Students cross out each word they hear in their grid and afterwards compare what they heard / didn’t hear with a partner.
STEP 5
Display or hand out a copy of the lyrics so that students can see where their words appear in the song and check new vocabulary if necessary.
STEP 6
Put students in pairs and assign each pair two lines of the song. Tell them that they are going to think about images to include in a video for the song. What images will they include to illustrate their two lines? Encourage them to use the lines as a starting point. It isn’t enough to say “Some green trees and red roses.” (Describe the trees. Where are they? Any people? Who are they? What are they doing? etc.)
STEP 7
Give them a few minutes to come up with some ideas and then ask each pair to tell the rest of the class what images they agreed on.
STEP 8
Now play the video so that students can compare their images with the ones used in the video. How many can they remember? You could do this as a competition: put students in groups and get them to write down as many animals / geographical features as they can. Award two points for words they know in English and one point for words in their own language.
A flatulent gorilla, a marmot called Alan, and a jealous giraffe all make an appearance in this lesson based on the BBC series Walk on the Wild Side. The lesson includes vocabulary work and listening before students come up with their own voiceover for a clip. And if you grew up in Britain in the 70s, chances are it will bring back memories of Johnny Morris and Animal Magic .