It’s raining cats and dogs!

In this ESL lesson, students will learn how to talk more descriptively about the weather and climate by using new adjectives. They will also practice expressing their feelings about the weather using intensifiers and mitigators. Moreover, students will learn that mentioning ‘rain’ or ‘storm’ doesn’t always mean that a person is talking about the weather.

Warm-up

The student describes the usual climate in their country using weather adjectives from the list, after which they match these adjectives to their synonyms.

Vocabulary

Weather conditions from the list should be marked as pleasant or unpleasant. Some of these words are later used to complete the sentences about weather.

Grammar: mitigators and intensifiers

In this part of the lesson, mitigators and intensifiers are introduced (e.g. incredibly, rather, a bit, etc.) and then used to complete the sentences.

The student combines intensifiers and adjectives they learned in the lesson to express their opinion about different kinds of weather (e.g. I think a bright, sunny day is…).

Video: How is the weather changing? 

The student watches a video about climate change, and learns and practices words and phrases mentioned in the video (e.g. dire consequences, safeguard the future, etc.). The issues related to the video are then discussed.

Weather idioms

The student learns about weather idioms and their meanings through a matching exercise. After that, they complete sentences using the idioms they learned.