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The Deadliest Animal - ESL Lesson Plan - Lexis - Intermediate

 
 Video Demonstration Coming Soon!

 A fun, creative and interactive ESL lesson that uses physical characteristics of animals as the language point. Students first create a new dangerous animal and then debate with other students why their animal is the deadliest. This particular lesson is great for intermediates, but the language can be adapted for lower or higher levels.

Special materials needed: Audio and flip chart paper.


Introduction: 1-2 minutes.  Tell your class to listen carefully and ask them what they think about when they hear this music. Play the famous theme from Jaws. From the music elicit shark and deadly/dangerous animal.


Lead in: 5-7 minutes. Have these questions pre boarded.

  1. What is the most dangerous animal in the world? Name three reasons why it's dangerous

  2. Name 4 dangerous animals that live in your home country.

  3. Have you ever seen a dangerous animal in the wild? What happened? If you haven't, what would you do if you saw a very dangerous animal?


Target Language: 10 minutes. Elicit and CCQ the following words.

 1. Wings  (a wing)
 2. Fur
 3. Feathers (a feather)
 4. Jaws (as in teeth)
 5. Fangs (a fang)
 6. Scales (a scale)
 7. Venomous
 8. Horns (a horn)
 9. A beak
10. Claws
11. Paws
12. A tail
13. Hooves (a hoof)

Study 1: 5-10 minutes.  Word Strips 
Make a few copies of all of the words on strips and put students into groups. Have one student at a time, take a strip and give the definition. The other students have to guess the word.


Study 2: 15 minutes or more with demo.  Creature Creation with Demo

Demo:
Tell the class you've discovered a new animal and they have to ask you questions about it. On a large piece of flip chart paper, have a bizarre, ridiculous animals that you've drawn. The animal that I used in my demo looked like a cross between an ostrich, bull and giraffe. I called it a "Rumferbumber" Have a name for the animal and descriptions of it ready. Let the students practice asking you some basic questions about it. Try to use a lot of the target language.

* Note: the more you get into this demo, the more you students will, so have fun with it. 

Study 2: Creature Creation
Put the students in small groups or pairs and give them some A3 paper if you have that available. Tell them that they need to create a new deadly animal with the language. They also have to name the animal, tell where it lives, what it eats and how it hunts.

During the creation, interact with the groups and practice the grammatical structures/target language with them. If students want to add new vocabulary, they can of course.

Activation: 15 minutes or more with demo.  The Deadliest Animal

 Demo: Tell your students that they have to convince the other groups that their animal is the deadliest. Have a little back and forth them as a class with your own animal comparing to some of the ones that were created.

Activation: Tell your students to stand up and mingle with the other groups. They have to describe their animal to the other groups and ask questions about the other creatures. Here are some guidelines
1. Why is your animal the deadliest
2. How would your animal do in a fight with the other animals.

The class has to determine which animal they think is the deadliest and why.

Feedback: 5 minutes.  Board mistakes, review vocabulary and end the class with a joke.

Check out all my demo videos on Youtube.

Chris Westergaard
The Language House TEFL
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