The four burners theory

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Vocabulary - life balance

talk about life balance

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

  • learn and practise the vocabulary related to priorities and life balance,
  • understand and extract information from a video.

Students talk about life balance and issues related to it. They also learn useful phrases like ‘keep up with’ and ‘at full blast’. Students watch a vlog about the four burners theory and discuss putting the theory into practice. 

B2 / Upper Intermediate60 minStandard LessonUnlimited Plan

WARM-UP & VOCABULARY

In this ESL lesson students talk about life balance from the start. In a warm-up activity, they answer the questions and describe their life balance. After that, students work with vocabulary related to balance and priorities. First, students match the sentence halves. Then, they find the phrases in the sentences with particular meanings (e.g. struggle with, take up, fall apart, etc.). To practise the phrases further, students discuss the statements and say if they find them relatable. They have one more discussion activity in which they talk about different stages of life. 

VIDEO & DISCUSSION

In this part of the lesson, students watch the video and talk about life balance even more. First, they read a short paragraph about the four burners theory and complete the gaps with missing words. Then, students watch the first part of the video and check their answers. Students watch the second part of the video and answer the questions about the theory. After watching the video, students express their opinions about the theory and share their own experiences. At the end of this lesson, students look at different ideas on how to make their lives more balanced and discuss them. 

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students practise the vocabulary from the lesson by correcting mistakes. They also complete the statements with their 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

Comments

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Leave a Reply

  1. [email protected]

    I won’t actually have a chance to use this lesson with the group until later this evening, but I can just look at the content, presentation of the content, density of the text, and video to believe that it will very likely succeed. Thank you for your help!

    1. Iulia

      Hi:)
      We’d be happy to hear how it went!

      1. [email protected]

        It went very well with the Friday group that I had mentioned. They are a very lively and diverse group. Then, on Sunday, I used it with an engineer who is rather serious and slightly less willing, which I had already sensed beforehand. Even so, I wanted to use this lesson again and presented it with a smile to this individual, and I would say, all things considered, he too played along with it pretty well. Thanks again! It is a teacher-friendly lesson in my opinion.

        1. Iulia

          Haha, it’s great to hear that even a less talkative student could enjoy it:) Thanks for the feedback!

  2. Mary Lima

    What a wonderful lesson! I’ve used it this week and my students found it very interesting.

    1. Justa

      That’s awesome 🙂 Thanks for taking the time to comment!

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