Keep it up!

Mariia | Jul 25, 2025Jul 22, 2025

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• engage in discussing motivation and how to encourage certain behaviours;
• practise words related to motivation;
• watch a video on an experiment showing the power of encouragement.

Students talk about how motivation works and how to influence someone’s behaviour. They learn key vocabulary related to encouragement and discouragement and express their opinions on motivational statements. They watch a video about a social experiment on encouragement and share personal experiences related to motivation. Students also analyse scenarios with motivation challenges and suggest ways to support others.

WARM-UP AND VOCABULARY

This lesson begins with a warm-up. Students look at the lesson title and the pictures of a carrot and a stick. They discuss what they think the lesson will be about. Then, students read sentences about giving effective messages (e.g. Teachers who want to praise students should say…). They match words for discussing motivation (e.g. praise, discourage, encourage) with their definitions. Afterwards, students choose the answer they think fits best in each situation. Moving on, they read the definition of ‘reinforcement’ and discuss questions about how it works. Following that, students unscramble words (e.g. praise, demotivate) in the statements about motivation. They then discuss the statements, say whether they agree or disagree with them and explain.

VIDEO AND DISCUSSION

In this part of the lesson, students read a text about a video showing a social experiment on encouragement. They answer questions about what they think will happen in the video. Then, students watch the first part of the video and check their answers. Afterwards, they watch the rest of the video and engage in discussing motivation by answering questions about the experiment outcomes. Moving on, students discuss questions about the video, motivation and their experiences. Finally, they read situations involving motivation challenges (e.g. Maya has been studying English for years but she feels like she’s not making progress) and answer questions about ways to motivate and support people.

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson plan also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students use the target words from the lesson to describe what they discussed in the lesson. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.

WORKSHEETS

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