Spotting the flags

Inna | Dec 27, 2024Dec 24, 2024

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• talk about ways of behaving in relationships and what they might mean;
• practise vocabulary for discussing relationships;
• watch a video titled ‘How to spot ‘beige flags’ in your relationships’.

Through this lesson, students talk about habits and behaviours in relationships, work on phrases to talk about the topic (e.g. a dealbreaker, raise eyebrows, play hot and cold, etc.) and discuss signs of traits in interactions. They also watch a video about red, green and beige flags, share their perspectives on relationship flags and their impact, and comment on situations related to friends and partners using the target vocabulary.

WARM-UP AND VOCABULARY

This lesson starts with a warm-up. Students look at people’s habits and behaviours (e.g. They expect you to always take the initiative, they don’t try to change you, etc.) and discuss their thoughts about them and relationship dynamics. After that, they match the beginnings with the endings of statements about identifying positive and negative traits in relationships. Then, students match vocabulary for discussing relationships from the statements (e.g. dwell on something, turn a blind eye to something, come off as, etc.) with their definitions. Following that, they read pairs of examples (e.g. a person turns a blind eye to trivial disagreements OR a person finds playing hot and cold unacceptable) and decide if they represent green or red flags. Next, students discuss which example in each pair is ‘greener’ or ‘redder’ in their opinion and explain their answer.

VIDEO AND DISCUSSION

At this point in the lesson, students watch a video about red, green and beige flags. Before they do, students discuss what ‘a beige flag’ might be. Then, they watch the first part of the video and check their ideas. Afterwards, students look at points related to beige flag behaviours in the video. They guess what the behaviours might be. Following that, students watch part of the video and check their answers. Next, they watch the final part of the video and complete notes about beige flags. After that, students discuss questions about their perspectives on relationship flags and their impact. Finally, students look at situations related to behaviours in friendships or relationships and comment on some of them using sentence frames which include vocabulary for discussing relationships (e.g. To me, this behaviour comes off as…, This wouldn’t be a definite dealbreaker for me, but…, etc.).

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson plan also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students complete unfinished statements about handling behaviours using the target vocabulary from the lesson. Then, they continue 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

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