20 Minute Lesson Filler: Best of a Normal Day

Observational games can make fun lesson activities, so I thought I'd share this video I found recently that I've bookmarked as a possible resource for revising vocabulary and grammar connected with daily routine and things to do with house and home.



Age Group: Teens and upwards

Level: Pre-Intermediate and above

Activities: Speaking and listening, asking and answering questions, describing things, revising vocabulary for everyday activities, people's homes, and household objects.

Step 1

Put learners in pairs or small groups.

Tell students that you are going to show them a short video clip and that they will need to watch it carefully, as they will be asking and answering questions about things that happened in the video later.

Step 2

Play the video, and give the students a few minutes to discuss it in their groups.

Step 3

Give the groups five minutes to come up with around three to five questions* about the things they saw in the video to ask another group of students.

(*depending on the level, & how much time you want to spend on the activity)

Model a few suggestions if necessary, to start the ball rolling...

"How many hoops was the man juggling?"

"What colour was the cat?", etc

Circulate and make a note of any errors you hear at this stage, for correction later.

Step 4

Play the video again, to allow students to check that they have accurately observed what is happening in the video, and that the questions they've written all make sense.

Step 5

Get the learners to ask each other their questions, and record the questions and learners' responses to them on the board, or on a flipchart.

Step 6

Watch the video again, to look for the answers to the questions and check who got them right.

Follow-on Activities

Briefly run through the main grammar structures used in the activity and correct any errors that arose, and then take a step back and see where the conversation goes from there...

Hopefully the activity will have helped learners get in the mood to talk about where they live and share some of the activities that they might do on a typical day with their classmates.

You might want to print out and laminate a few images perhaps, to use as conversation prompts and get the discussion flowing.

There is a nice collection of interesting and unusual Creative Commons images of homes from all around the world on ELTPics that you could use, such as this one, for example:




Who do you think might live in a house like this?

I'd be interested to know the answer to that one myself... :-)

image credit: Carol Goodey, ELTPics on Flickr