| LESSON OVERVIEW
The main objectives of this ESL lesson about leaders are to:
- support personal opinions by providing examples and sharing experiences,
- comment on information from an explainer video,
- brainstorm what might happen in different situations.
Students discuss what a good leader is and how leaders should behave in certain situations. They also watch an explainer video on introverted leaders and share their personal preferences regarding being a leader and having a leader. The lesson includes an additional vocabulary task.
B2 / Upper Intermediate45 min
60 minSpeaking ClassUnlimited Plan
This is a Speaking Class worksheet. It includes a variety of tasks that let your students practise their speaking skills. This lesson format does not focus on grammar or vocabulary. Learn more about it here.
WARM-UP & DISCUSSION
This ESL lesson about leaders starts with a warm-up task. Students look at some types of leaders (e.g. coach, politician) and think of reasons why people might need each of them. After that, you can ask students to do an additional vocabulary activity. It is a matching activity in which students need to create phrases related to leadership (e.g. assign a task, lead by example). The phrases are used in the lesson and you can also encourage students to use them throughout the lesson.
Next, students look at four pictures and say what being a leader means. They also add their own ideas about being a leader. Finally, students finish statements about leaders with their own ideas. They share them with a partner and see if they agree. There are also some statement endings provided in the teacher’s note which you can use in a one-to-one class.
VIDEO & OPINION SHARING
In the second part of this ESL lesson about leaders, students look at a list of situations and discuss how a good leader should react. They talk about different personality traits and how leaders with specific traits could handle the situations from the previous task better. After that, students watch the video and discuss questions about it. For example, they share their views on being and having an introverted leader and on a quote from the video. Finally, students choose whether they’d rather be a good leader or have a good leader. Based on that decision, they need to choose and discuss other options (e.g. handle day-to-day tasks or handle the big picture).
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Cool lesson, thanks a million ❤️
That is lovely to hear!
This lesson was great . It provided lots of opportunities for the student to talk. I suggest you add a question asking the students opinion´s about introverted leaders .)
Thanks, Pablo! I’m happy to hear you like the lesson. And regarding your suggestion, there are several questions about introverted leaders in ex. 6 (slides 15 and 16).
This lesson is superb! The video selected is excellent. It provides a lot of insight. The communicative activities are
also top-notch. The collocations about leadership are extremely useful!
Awesome, thank you!
I absolutely loved the class. My only suggestion would be break down the collocation activites into two parts. It’s a little time consuming and challenging with so many options. If you could break down, students would be more assertive and it would be time-saving.
Thanks for the suggestion. We’ll take another look at the task.
I have taught this lesson five times so far, both to individuals and groups (business classes). One thing I had really not noticed until a student made me realise it this morning … the pictures provided in ex.2 match the jobs in ex.1. I had completely overlooked this detail.
Some of my students had a little trouble expressing themselves when doing tasks 3 and 4. I mean, they could have used better vocabulary. So, they did the collocation task at the end of the lesson, then revisited their earlier vocab choices of earlier and enhanced their language skills. It worked really well.
Also, I find this lesson to be a great precursor to watching Susan Cain’s TED Talk “The power of introverts.”
Such a useful lesson!
Thanks for sharing! I really appreciate the details and I’m happy the lesson worked with your students 🙂
The pictures in ex. 2 don’t match the words in ex. 1, at least that wasn’t my intention. But I suppose it’s OK that a student saw a connection there (and hopefully was able to explain it).