In this lesson students practice talking about their abilities using “can“. Students learn some action verbs, play fun games and activities, sing a song and do a worksheet.
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Time: 40 mins – 1 hour
Objectives: 1. Talking about ability, 2. Asking “Can you…?” questions and answering with “I can …”.
Structures: “Can you . ”, “I can …”, “What can you do?”
Target vocabulary: jump, run, swim, hop, [hide_on_uk]stomp[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]stamp[/hide_on_us] my feet, turn around, fly, ride a bike
Lesson materials
Flashcards:
Printables:
Songs:
Readers:
Additional materials:
Supplies:
Notes:
This is a high energy lesson which is great fun and allows your students to pick up the structures quickly. Parts of this lesson can be used in other lessons as energy burners (especially the song).
How to talk about ability using “can”?
“Can” is a modal verb and has a range of uses. One of those is to talk about general ability. This is something that you have learned in the past and you can now do at any time you want, such as being able to ride a bike, swim or play a musical instrument.
Verbs following “can” take the infinitive form.
Can takes the following forms:
The beginning of your lesson is extremely important: this is where you set the tone of your lesson and get everyone in the right frame of mind for learning English. It is also an opportunity to check homework and review previous lessons.
Click for warm up suggestions for the start of your lessonsThese activities can be done in the following order at the start of your lesson:
1. Welcoming
Greet the students by name as they enter the classroom and gesture for them to sit down. If you have space on the floor, it’s a good idea to have a cushion for each student as this makes sitting arrangements easy to [hide_on_uk]organize[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]organise[/hide_on_us]. Try and arrange the cushions beforehand spaced out in a fan-shape around you.
2. Name tags
Before class prepare some name tags (stickers or pin-on tags) with each student’s name written in lower case letters. Sit down with your students and lay out the name tags in front of you. Pick up each tag and call out the name. Try and encourage each student to put their hand up and say “yes”. Hand over the tags and help to pin / stick on. Later on as your students recognize their written names you can have each student in turn pick out their own name tag.
3. Greetings
Use a glove puppet (such as a Sesame Street puppet) to greet the students. Keep him in a cloth bag. Bring out the bag, open it enough to see in and shout into the bag the puppet’s name (e.g. “Cookie Monster!”). Then move your ear to the opening to listen – nothing. Go to each student and encourage them to shout the puppet’s name into the bag – each time nothing happens. Finally, get all the students together to shout the name at the same time. This time the puppet wakes up and jumps out of the bag! The puppet then chats to each student:
Puppet (teacher): Hello, What’s your name?
Student Hello. My name is….
Puppet: Goodbye / See you!
Student: Goodbye / See you!
As your students learn more phrases, you can include them in the conversation, such as “How old are you? Do you like …?, Can you …?, etc.
Finally, the puppet goes back into the bag and back to sleep.
4. Sing the “Hello song” or a review song
Sit in a circle and sing along to the song. Encourage students to clap along or pat their laps in time with the music. The Hello song is a good song to start the lesson with, especially as it has an accompanying Goodbye song to sing at the end of the lesson.
Lyrics for the “Hello song”
Hello, hello, Hello, hello,
How are you? How are you?
I’m fine, thank you, I’m fine, thank you,
We’re ok, We’re ok.
Lyrics for “The Hello Song”
Hello, hello,
How are you today?
Hello, hello,
How are you today?
I’m fine, thank you,
I’m fine, thank you,
I’m fine, thank you,
And how about you?
Hello, hello,
How are you today?
I’m fine, thank you,
And how about you?
Gestures for the “Hello song”
These are quite straight forward. First time you play the song do the gestures and encourage everyone to do them with you.
[hide_on_uk] Short sample (members get full-length song):
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[hide_on_us] Short sample (members get full-length song):
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5. Read a classroom reader again
As you progress through the lessons you will start to build up a catalog of classroom readers. Kids love going back to old stories and reading through them again. Invite a student to pick a classroom reader and read through it as a class. Make the story as interactive as possible by asking questions (e.g. what [hide_on_uk]colors[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colours[/hide_on_us] there are, the names of different objects, etc.) and getting students to speculate what is going to happen next in the story.
6. Homework check
Check each student’s homework set in the last lesson. Ask each student some questions about their homework worksheet (e.g. “what [hide_on_uk]color[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]colour[/hide_on_us] is it?”), give lots of praise, and then put some kind of mark on the homework sheet (e.g. a sticker, a stamp or draw a smiley face). Finally, tell your students to put their homework back into their bags.
7. Do “Exercise routine” activity
Say the following and have your students follow your lead: “Stand up (teacher stands and so does everyone else), “Hands up / hands down” (x 3-5), “Jump” (x3-5), “Run! / Stop!” (x3-5), “Turn around! / Stop!” (x3-5), finally “Sit down”.
Throughout the course you can introduce other commands, such as “Hop”, “Star Jump”, “Wiggle”, “Crouch” and so on.
Extra activity: Once your students have got to know these exercises you can play “Teacher says” using these actions.
How to play … Teacher says:
This is basically the game ‘Simon says’ but using the words “Teacher says” instead. The teacher tells the students to do an action and they do as asked (e.g. “Teacher says … jump 3 times”). The teacher keeps on giving instructions with different actions using “Teacher says …”. At some point the teacher gives a command without using the phrase “Teacher says” (e.g. “Hop 5 times”) and the students must not do that action – they have to stay still. Any students that do the action have to sit out for the rest of the game. The last student standing is the winner.
8. Name writing practice
If your students cannot write their names yet, this is a great activity. For really young ones, don’t worry if their effort is a scrawly mess – always encourage and praise.
You will need to prepare a writing sheet for each student before class with their name written in dots for them to practice tracing their names (also prepare one for yourself so you can model the task). You can either make these yourself (hand draw the dots for each name) or use a font typed into a Word document – we like to use the “National First Font Dotted” font (you can download it for free here: http://www.fontspace.com/roger-white/national-first-font-dotted).
Prepare the sheets something like this:
Tip:
Make a few extra copies of each student’s name writing sheet so you can use them in future lesson or for homework.
When everyone has finished writing their names, get each student to hold up their sheet so you and everyone can see. Give lots of praise to each student.
9. Review past lessons
Reviewing past lessons is very important – students need constant practice of new vocab, structures, songs, games and so on. Always review parts of your last lesson as well as some parts from other previous lessons. You can spend 5-10 minutes reviewing – it’s fine to recycle games and activities from your past lessons to review as kids enjoy playing familiar games (although be careful not to play a game to death!).
Note: You can also include review activities in the main body of your lesson. Kids can have short attention spans so it’s good to be able to pull out lots of activities during different stages of the lesson.
Other ideas to include in your warm up:
What’s in the bag?
This is a great activity to do at the beginning of your lessons. Fill a large cloth bag with items from your previous lessons (e.g. plastic fruit, animals, etc.). You can also throw in a few other objects (e.g. a pencil, a plastic bottle, a plastic cup – anything lying around (and safe!)). Show the bag to your students and shake it to rattle the objects inside. Pull out different objects, teach/elicit their names, have students hold and pass the objects around. You can even have students pull objects out of the bag. Pull out 1 or 2 objects per student. Finally, place the objects around the classroom and have each student retrieve each object as you call out its name and put it back in the bag.
Knock-knock
This can be used at the beginning of each class. Teach the students to knock on the door before entering the classroom. There are 2 variations for the next step:
Spin the bottle
Sit students in a circle with a bottle in the middle. Teacher spins the bottle. When it stops spinning the student it is pointing at has to answer a question. If the answer is correct then that student can spin the bottle. For example, How are you? What’s your name? What is this? (show an object or flashcard) Do you like _?, etc.
Talk about the weather (do after you have taught the weather lesson plan).
1. Teach the actions vocabulary
Start with flashcards of the actions in the song (jump, run, swim, hop, [hide_on_uk]stomp[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]stamp[/hide_on_us] my feet, turn around). Have all your students stand up and pull out the first flashcard (e.g. “Jump”). Get the students to do the action as soon as you reveal the card. Shout out the word as you are all doing the action and encourage everyone to shout the word as well. Do this for all 6 cards.
2. Play “Quick flashcard actions”
Lay the flashcards face down on the ground and mix them up. With your students still standing, quickly turn over one card for all to see and shout out the action (e.g. jump). Everyone jumps for a second or two. Then turn over another card and shout the action for everyone to do. This should be quick paced with actions changing frequently.
3. Play “Teacher says”
This is the game “Simon says” but using the word “teacher”, or your name, instead. Go straight into the game (no explanations necessary) by saying, “Teacher says (jump)”. Do the action and make sure everyone else follows along. Do a few more “run, turn around, swim, etc.”.
Then at some point give a command without the “Teacher says” part (e.g. “Jump!”). First time round, everyone will jump, so make it very clear that they shouldn’t do this when you don’t say “Teacher says”. After a while your students will get the hang of it. Play the game faster and faster. When a student makes a mistake they have to sit the rest of the game out. The last student standing is the winner.
4. Teach “Can you . ”, “I can …”
Take out two more flashcards for the actions “fly” and “ride a bike”. Have all your students sit down. Pull out the “Jump” flashcard. Say, “I can jump” – point to yourself and nod your head. Then jump and again say, “I can jump”. Do the same for another flashcard (e.g. run). Then pull out the “fly” flashcard. Look surprised and shake your head, saying ,”No. I can’t fly”. Motion trying to fly but falling on the ground.
You can also ask some students, “Can you fly?” – some are bound to say, “Yes”, but look
shocked and say, “No. No I don’t think so.”. Next do a few more actions (turn around, hop) and then pull out the “ride a bike” flashcard. Again, say, “I can’t ride a bike” and motion trying to but falling off. Then finish with the remaining flashcards (you can choose whether to say you can or can’t swim).
Now, pull out a flashcard (e.g. hop) and say to the class, “Can you hop?”. Encourage everyone to say, “Yes, I can hop” and show you how. Do this with all of the flashcards – try and encourage some to say they can’t do some actions (e.g. ride a bike, swim and especially fly!).
5. Sing the “What can you do?” song
Place the flashcards on the board in order of the song, or pin up the “What can you do?” song poster. Play the song and sing along – encourage everyone to sing and do the actions with you. For the first time you use this song, play it a couple of times.
Lyrics for “What can you do?”
(Each verse gets faster and faster)
Verse 1:
What can you do? What can you do?
Can you jump? I can jump!
Jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump,
jump, jump, jump, I can jump!
Can you run? I can run!
Run, run, run, run, run, run,
run, run, run, I can run!
Verse 2:
What can you do? What can you do?
Can you swim? I can swim!
Swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim,
swim, swim, swim, I can swim!
Can you hop? I can hop!
Hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop,
hop, hop, hop, I can hop!
Verse 3:
What can you do? What can you do?
[hide_on_uk]Can you stomp your feet? I can stomp my feet!
Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp,
stomp, stomp, stomp, I can stomp my feet![/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Can you stamp your feet? I can stamp my feet!
Stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp,
stamp, stamp, stamp, I can stamp my feet![/hide_on_us]
Can you turn around? I can turn around!
Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn,
turn, turn, turn, I can turn around!
Verse 4:
(Let’s do all six!)
Let’s jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump.
Let’s run, run, run, run, run, run.
Let’s swim, swim, swim, swim, swim, swim.
Let’s hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop.
[hide_on_uk]Let’s stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp.[/hide_on_uk][hide_on_us]Let’s stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp.[/hide_on_us]
Let’s turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn.
Lets jump, run, swim, hop, stomp, turn.
We can!
Gestures for “What can you do?”
The actions to this song are simple – simply do each action as they come up in the song. It’s probably best for everyone to do the actions on the spot otherwise things could get a bit hectic!
