Should you trust your first impressions?

The main goals of this ESL lesson plan are to:

• – learn about the complex nature of first impressions and when to trust initial judgments in various scenarios;
• – practice advanced vocabulary work through phrase completion with verbs, gap-fill exercises with adjectives, and reading comprehension skills;
• – watch a video about whether you should trust your first impression and analyze scenarios where first impressions may be beneficial or misleading.

In this Advanced ESL lesson plan, students learn about the complex nature of first impressions through various exercises including vocabulary work, scenario analysis, and sentence matching.

Warm-up: 

From a list of traits students choose top three things that influence first impressions.

Video:

Students watch an informative video titled “Should you trust your first impression?” After viewing, they complete a matching exercise connecting sentence beginnings with appropriate endings based on the video content.

Exercises:

Language skills are reinforced through various activities. Students complete phrases with given verbs. In the second exercise, they fill gaps in sentences with given adjectives.

Reading:

Students read a text about when to trust first impressions and answer questions about the text to test reading comprehension.

Discussion:

Students read three scenarios and discuss whether trusting first impressions would be beneficial or potentially misleading in each of them.