Dressed for school

In this Intermediate ESL lesson, students will learn vocabulary related to clothing and school uniforms.  They will also learn how to express their own opinions, and will be able to use ‘when’ for describing situations that are always true.

Opening discussion

The student discusses questions related to school uniforms.

Vocabulary

A picture of two students wearing school uniforms is shown for the student to label their clothing items (e.g. collar, tie, pants, skirt, etc.). Then, they match clothing items to the body parts they’re worn on (e.g. back, shoulders, neck, etc.).

Video: School uniforms: debate

The student watches the video about a school uniform debate in Australia and then marks the statements based on the video as true or false. Finally, the student answers the questions based on the video.

Reading: Opinions on school uniforms

Prior to reading opinions on school uniforms, the student fills in the gaps using new vocabulary which will be used in the reading exercise.
After reading the opinions, the student sorts them out according to speakers (e.g. Uniforms are generally bad. – Speaker 2). 

Ways to express an opinion

The student reads the text again and tries to identify phrases used to express an opinion (e.g. for me, in my eyes, the way I see it, etc.). This is followed by a memory test, in which the student tries to remember all the phrases mentioned in the text. They get the chance to use these phrases by introducing their opinions on different topics (e.g. travelling, cats vs dogs, school uniforms, etc.).

Grammar: when statements

Finally, the use and structure of when statements are introduced (when + present simple, … present simple). The student then tries to find the mistakes in examples of when sentences.