ESL Lesson Plan - Lexis - Appearance "Sketch Artists"

Here's a lesson that you can do with intermediates and up. I just shot the video for it (coming soon) so make sure to take a look at it. The lesson primarily deals with lexis, with the topic of words associated with appearance. At the end of the lesson, students become sketch artists for the police and have to ask questions to a witness about a crime.  The lesson I did took right around 60 minutes but can be lengthened or shortened if needed.

Materials needed: Pictures of people (about 10 or so depending on size)


Warmer: (I had students ask each other about their weekends)

Intro: (just a couple of minutes) Change something about your appearance and ask students to tell you what's changed about you. Elicit the concept of appearance.

Lead In: (5-10 minutes) Have these questions pre-boarded. Demo the questions out with the students and then put them in groups.

1. What things about your appearance stand out about you? (you probably have to pre-teach stand out)
2. Have you recently changed anything with your appearance? What have you changed?
3. If you could change anything about your appearance, what would it be?

Target Language: (less than 10 minutes) Elicit and CCQ the following
Elicit these main categories and board them: Dress, Hair, Build, Complexion, Facial Features
once those are boarded or pasted, elicit words for the different categories. Feel free to substitute words for different levels.
Dress: Casually, Formally
Hair: Short, Long, Straight, Wavy, Curly, Bald, Shaved
Build: Thin, Skinny, Lanky, Overweight, Slender, Muscular
Complexion: Fair/Light Complexion, Dark Complexion, Olive Complexion
Facial Features: A Mole, Light/Dark Eyes, A Beard, A Mustache

Note: As mentioned, depending on your level you can make this target language easier or more difficult.

Study 1: (about 7 minutes) Students describe each other
Demo: Start describing someone in the class and have the students guess who it is.
Once they get it, pass the ball to a student and they have to continue describing someone. Then they pass it to someone else

Study 2: (about 7 minutes) Students describe each other with questions
Now students get to practice forming questions with the target language instead of just giving responses.

Activation Setup and Demo: (about 5 minutes)  Leave the class and enter in again with a picture of a person (celebrity) on your face. Start stealing things from your students and then quickly leave the room. Don't tell your students what you're going to do because you'll ruin the engage. Just do it.
Come back into the room again and pretend to be a police officer. Ask the students to describe to you what the person looked like. Take notes, ask questions and begin to draw the person. Hold up the picture again if needed.

Activation: (about 15 minutes) Put students in pairs and pass out a picture one person in the pair. Tell the other student that they are the police and that their partner is a witness (teach this if necessary) to a crime. The student who is the police has to ask questions about the perps appearance using the target language and has to draw/take notes on what the criminal looked like
Note: Remind students that this happened in the past so they should use the past tense.
Note: Make sure that the police are asking questions!

Once the student gives a good description switch the roles up. Take the photo that they had and give them a new one. Now the police are witnesses and the witness is a police officer.

Feedback: (2 minutes) Take all of the pictures, spread them out on a table, and have students (using their drawn pictures and notes) determine which one was their criminal.

Error Correction: (about 4 minutes)
Go over the errors and positive things you heard in the lesson. End the lesson with a joke.