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Relevant for Primary School teachers and students.

Analysing language choices in reviews

In this lesson, students examine word choice in a pair of published reviews.

Goals

  • Identify words with particular effects in a particular genre of English writing, the review.
  • Discuss the effects of word choice in real language in use.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will look at two published reviews and analyse the language choices that the writers made.

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Analysing language choices in reviews: Activity

It’s reasonably compact, compared to most smartphones these days, with a 3.7in screen that’s slightly bigger than the iPhone’s. It looks neat enough, but when you pick it up it feels like no other phone around. The screen is slightly curved, and so are the edges of the phone. It all feels like a smooth, tactile pebble, with glossy front and matte back. It’s made from polycarbonate, that is plastic, but it’s put together like it’s one piece. Even the tiny holes on the bottom edge for the speaker are individually precision-milled.

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Antonymy 1

Plan

Activity 1

Explain to learners that antonyms are pairs of words that mean the opposite of each other. This is very common with adjectives. Show the three examples; then ask learners to come up with three more pairs themselves. Check to make sure they are using adjectives. 

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Antonymy 1

Lesson

Objective

To understand the meaning of antonyms and how they are formed.

Activity 1

In the lesson on synonyms, we saw how words can have similar meanings. They can also be related through opposite meanings. This is very common with adjectives: 

  • long - short
  • old - new 
  • quick - slow 

We call these pairs of words antonyms. Can you think of three other pairs of antonyms? 

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Antonymy 2

Plan

Activity 1

Explain to learners that they will continue to look at antonyms, but this time by looking at adjectives. Make sure they understand these key terms by discussing the three example pairs. 

In the next slide, show the learners the five sentences. Each sentence has a gap which can be filled with an adjective or its antonym. Have learners copy the sentences and fill the gap with two possibilities. Reveal the answers and accept any other reasonable options.

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Antonymy 2

Lesson

Objective

To examine how adjective antonyms are formed and used.

Activity 1

Adjectives commonly have opposite words, or antonyms. When we think of an adjective, we often immediately think of its opposite. For example: 

  • rich - poor
  • old - young
  • easy - difficult

For each of these five sentences, write down the pair of adjective antoynms that could fill the gap. 

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Antonymy 3

Lesson

Objective

To examine verb antonyms, and how they are formed and used.

Activity 1

Antonyms are also very common with verbs.

Just like adjectives and nouns, they can be formed by adding a prefix.

1. I tied my shoes.

2. I untied my shoes.

Activity 1

Look at this list of six verbs.

What is the antonym for each one? Which prefix do we use to change it? 

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Baby Sentences: Activity

Daddy go work

Mummy read

Daddy bike

What that

Where blanket

Sock off

Teddy fall

Sammy tired

Building verb phrases

In this resource we’ll look at how verb phrases can be built up by putting auxiliary verbs and main verbs together.

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Building verb phrases: Activity

In this activity, use the interactive whiteboard to build verb phrases. Can you use all the words and make every verb phrase grammatical?

Encourage your students to explore the meaning of the verb phrases they construct: how does the use of modal verbs affect the meaning of the main verb, for example? What about the tense?

Drag words next to each other and they will 'snap' together. Double-click to 'unsnap'.

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Changing voice

Goals

  • Practise changing voice: from active sentences to passive, and passive sentences to active.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will practise turning actives into passives, and passives into actives.

Activity 1 in the right hand menu presents students with active sentences. Ask students to work individually, in pairs, or in groups and to write down a passive version of the sentence.

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Changing voice: Activity 1

Two guards examined the BMW. → The BMW was examined by two guards.

Renoir painted the same road a few months later. → The same road was painted by Renoir a few months later. Or 'The same road was painted a few months later by Renoir' is also acceptable.

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Changing voice: Activity 2

The leader of the party is elected by the political party. → The political party elects the leader of the party.

The full costs of their care are met by the NHS. → The NHS meets the full costs of their care.

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Collective Nouns

Plan

Activity 1

Ask learners to think of some nouns and make them singular and plural. Then, ask if they can think of any nouns which you cannot make plural. Show them the examples in the next slide and see if they can guess the words. 

Activity 2

Ask the learners to look at the table of collective nouns and organise them into two categories. Use the 'hint' button to help if your learners are stuck.

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Collective Nouns

Lesson

Objective

To understand diffferent types of collective nouns.

Usually, nouns can be singular or plural, like book or books.

What other examples can you think of? 

There are some nouns which only appear in the singular. Can you think of any? 

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Derived nouns and composition

In this activity we will look at suffixes that can change adjectives and verbs into nouns.

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Derived nouns and composition: Activity 1

Complete the examples with nouns which are derived from the highlighted adjectives. The first answer is provided for you.

Anna was late. It annoyed me. → Anna's lateness annoyed me.

Jeff is shy. I didn’t notice this until the party. → I didn’t notice Jeff’s ___ until the party. I didn’t notice Jeff’s shyness until the party.

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Derived nouns and composition: Activity 2

Complete the examples with nouns which are derived from the highlighted adjectives. The first answer is provided.

The peacekeeping forces withdrew. It led to civil war. → The withdrawal of the peacekeeping forces led to civil war.

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Gender in Nouns

Plan

Activity 1

Explain to the learners that nouns can refer to male or female people. In language, this difference is called gender. 

Ask learners to copy down the list and add the nouns of the oppsite gender. Show them the solutions and ask them what patterns they notice. Answer: some are completely different words while others use a suffix to change the meaning. 

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Gender in Nouns

Lesson

Objective

To explore the meaning of gender in nouns.

Activity 1

What's the difference between the words mother and father?

Nouns for people can refer to a man or a male such as father or to a woman or female such as mother .

In language, we call this difference gender.

For each noun, write the word that expresses the opposite gender: 

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Genre of Narratives and Recounts

Lesson Plan

Goals:

  • Distinguish recounts from narratives
  • Identify the discourse structure and features of register used in narratives
  • Re-order a narrative by following the appropriate features

Lesson Plan

Before this lesson, you may want to complete the lesson An Introduction to Genre, so that learners are familiar with the key terms discourse structure and register

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Genre of Narratives and Recounts

Activities

Activity 1

Today, we're looking at the genre of storytelling. Narratives and recounts are two ways of describing events.

What do you think is the difference between narratives and recounts?

Narratives and recounts both relate events that took place in the past and which occur in a logical order.

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Homonyms

Plan

Please note: there are two pages of activities for this lesson.

Activity 1

Show the learners the two example words. Ask them to discuss with a partner how many different meanings they can think of. In the next two slides, show possible solutions. 

Next, explain that words with multiple unrelated meanings are called homonyms. Ask learners to identify the word class of the two example words.  

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Homonyms 1

Lesson

Objective

To identify the different meanings of homonyms of various word classes. 

Activity 1

Look at these two words. How many meanings can you think of for each? 

  • bank 
  • pupil

  • bank 
    1. an organization or a building that handles money and provides financial services. 
    2. the land on the side of a river or a lake

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