ESL Lesson Plan - Create your own Movie - Lexis

  Here's a lesson for intermediate students and up that involves the students making a mock movie and pitching it to a movie studio.
 Introduction: just a few minutes.

 Come in pretending to be a director and mime filming the class. Elicit the concept of movies or film.

 Lead in: around 7 minutes.
Demo these questions out and put students in groups to answer them.
1. Do you like watching movies? What is your favorite movie?
2. What good movies have you seen this last year?
3. Who is your favorite actor and director? Why?
4. What well known movies have been made in your country?


Lexis: around 10 minutes.
Elicit and CCQ the following

an actor, a star, a lead role, a supporting role
a director
a producer
a plot
a cast
a setting
a genre
a thriller
a horror movie
a comedy, a black comedy, a romantic comedy
a drama
a documentary
to pitch (a movie)
a twist


Study 1: around 5 minutes.
Matching with strips. Students match the definition with the word with strips of paper.

Study 2:  around 7-10 minutes.
Guess the movie. One student thinks of a movie and the other students have to ask yes or no questions to guess what the movie is. Make sure that students go through and ask all of the questions based on the lexis before guessing.

Activation: Around 20 minutes.
Demo: Have a pre-made movie created complete with a movie poster for a mock movie. Students take a few minutes to ask you about your film. You will probably have to elicit and train them to ask the right questions. For example, "who is the star of your movie? What is the setting? What genre is it?"

Set up: put students in groups and have them create their own movie based on the above words and questions. Monitor the students to check that they are doing the task and interact with them to give them  bit of practice with the words/questions.

Activation: The Pitch 
Once the students have completed this, break the class and explain that they have to pitch their movie to a movie studio. Have a few students take the roles of movie studio executives and they are tasked with asking the other groups about their films. After they have spoken to a few groups, change the roles, and now the executives are film makers and have to pitch their movies. Once everyone has pitched their movie to someone, the class decides which movie they liked the most and why.

Feedback: just a few minutes.
After the class has discussed what they liked/disliked about the different movies, board the errors you heard and end the lesson with a joke.

Here's the video