My bag isn’t brown (‘to be’ negative)

Ewa | Dec 01, 2024Dec 22, 2024

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this ESL lesson about colours are to:

• practise negative forms of the verb ‘be’;
• use colours to describe pictures and students’ possessions;
• listen to a recording in which people talk about themselves. 

In this ESL lesson about colours students not only learn colour words (e.g. black, yellow, blue) but also practise negative forms of the verb ‘be’! They learn to describe pictures using colours and talk about the colours of things that belong to them. Students use both positive and negative forms of the verb ‘be’ throughout the lesson, and listen to a recording in which people talk about themselves. Students learn grammar rules, do pairwork, and get lots of practice at error correction.

WARM-UP AND COLOURS

This ESL lesson about colours starts with a fun warm-up! Students look at pictures (e.g. carrots, a penguin, roses) and choose the correct colours from the boxes. After that, they watch part of a video (50 seconds long) in which people say what colour a dress is. They choose the colours they hear from a list provided. Next, students match descriptive sentences with the correct photos. After that, they look at a list and talk about their colours (e.g. my school, my car, my bag). Then, students begin to practise negative forms of the verb ‘be’. They complete gaps in sentences with the correct form (is/isn’t, am/ am not, are/aren’t). After that, students look at the sentences again and complete gaps with information about the negative forms of ‘to be’. 

GRAMMAR AND MORE PRACTICE

Students continue to practise negative forms of the verb ‘be’ by completing a table of the singular and plural negative and positive forms. They then complete gaps in sentences with both positive and negative forms of the verb ‘be’. Next, they listen to a recording in which the people in the photos talk about themselves. They hear three sentences for each photo, one of which is false. Students use the positive or negative form of the verb ‘be’ to make it true (e.g. Our dog isn’t big – Our dog is big). To wrap up this ESL lesson about colours students use a word cloud and write two true sentences and one false sentence. Then, they read the sentences and their partner corrects the sentence they think is not true. 

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson plan also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students read sentences and choose the correct verb form. Then, they complete follow-up sentences with their own ideas. 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

4

1