Taking smart risks

The main goals of this ESL lesson plan are to:

• – focus on understanding and expressing nuanced perspectives about risk-taking in professional and personal contexts;
• – practice advanced vocabulary, dialogue creation, gap-filling, sentence transformation, reading comprehension, and discussion skills;
• – watch a video about how successful people take risks and explore the balance between taking smart risks and maintaining prudent caution.

This C2-level lesson focuses on understanding and expressing nuanced perspectives about risk-taking in professional and personal contexts. Through various exercises including dialogue creation, word rearrangement, gap-filling, and sentence transformation, students practice advanced vocabulary and structures while exploring the balance between taking smart risks and maintaining prudent caution.

Warm-up 

Students discuss whether they agree or disagree with certain opinions and explain why.

Video 

Students watch an informative video titled “How Successful People Take Risks.” 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 the gaps in sentences with correct words. In the second exercise, they complete sentences so that they have a similar meaning to the original sentences.

Writing

Together with the teacher, students create two dialogues between a mentor and a mentee discussing risk-taking in professional situations.

Reading 

Students read a text about taking smart risks and answer questions about the text to test reading comprehension.

Discussion 

Students rearrange the words to form questions, then answer them.