LESSON PLAN: Work-out & gym vocabulary

/ B1, B2, Teachers, Vocabulary training

December 2020 – This is a multi-skill lesson plan teaching and revising vocabulary linked to the topics ‘gym’ and ‘work-out’. It follows the methodology of the so-called ‘flipped classroom’. Students are expected to do some pre-lesson task and the lesson is based on this pre-study.

In this case, students need to work through a longer podcast with some interactive exercises to familiarize with the vocabulary used in the gym. The worksheets expand this topic to ‘home exercise’ and ‘work & fitness’, providing two reading tasks and one listening task (a TED Talk about walking meetings).

The lesson focuses mainly on vocabulary (working out and parts of the body). The minimum recommended level is intermediate/B1, though it can be expanded to higher level conversations.

PRE-LESSON TASK:

As mentioned before, students need to prepare for this lesson. They are asked to listen to a more than 16-minute long podcast form the Premier Skills English website featured by the British Council. There are only four short tasks at the end of the podcast, checking on vocabulary, the website doesn’t provide questions for during listening. However, you can find four tasks designed for the listening part on the worksheets.

N.B: Students with difficulties in listening can also take advantage of the transcript which is available on the Premier Skills English website under the podcast window.

WARM UP:

Give feedback on the homework. Check the answers to the four tasks on the worksheet and ask your students about how they did in the online exercises (if assigned for homework).
There are some suggestions on how to reactivate vocabulary related to exercising on the Teacher’s worksheet.

LEAD IN:

If talking about working out, the topic of body and parts of the body comes up naturally. So check on your students’ word knowledge by asking them to order a list of vocabulary items to different areas on the human body (ex. 1). Some of the lexical items are A1-A2 words, but most of them are introduced at or after B1 level.

MAIN PART – READING:

The main part starts with a reading task: ask your students to read an article from ideas.ted.com and to answer 7 questions about it. Some sentences were cut from the article to make it shorter, but no other changes were made to it. Students can read twice and they can write their answers down or just report them to you.

MAIN PART – LISTENING:

A listening task follows this reading exercise: ask your students to watch/listen to Nilofer Merchant in her 2013 TEDTalk with the title ‘Got a meeting? Take a walk’ (see below). Explain to your students that the speaker is American and that they don’t need to understand everything.

There are two exercises to this TEDTalk: listening for gist (ex. 3) and listening for details and deciding if the statements are true or false (ex. 4).

MAIN PART – READING:

If time allows, you can move onto the next reading task: Jessica Gross wrote an article discussing Nilofer Merchant’s ideas (on the same ideas.ted.com website) and expands her idea. On the worksheets you can find two exercises to the text: gist reading (ex. 5a) and reading for details (ex. 5b). Students can read twice if necessary. The text was shortened and minor changes were made to two paragraphs. The original online version is linked to the worksheets.

WIND DOWN:

The lesson plan closes with a speaking task: ask your students to answer the questions in exercise 6 (in pairs). Monitor them, then ask for and give feedback. Feel free to expand this final conversation with any question about the topic.
You can also assign related exercises from the British Council Learn English website (B1 – Reading and B2 – Listening), but you can also use these to revise the topic at some point in the future.