LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• discuss life and career goals;
• practise structures with ‘It’ to give opinions;
• watch a video and talk about personal passions.

This lesson allows students to understand the use of structures with ‘It’ (e.g. it seems to me that, it feels as if, it looks like, etc.), share their opinions on dreams and ambitions, and practise useful vocabulary to talk about the topic (e.g. pursue, defer, master, etc.). They also discuss balancing dreams and practical life challenges and watch a video about a man who pursues two careers.

This is a Flipped Classroom lesson plan. In a nutshell, it means that the first part of the lesson needs to be done by students at home. Learn more about flipped classroom and how we implement it in these lesson plans in our post.

PRE-CLASS ACTIVITIES

At home, students study and practise the use of structures with ‘It’. First, they match the structures (e.g. It + verb + that) with examples (e.g. It annoys me that he keeps making excuses.). After that, students complete sentences using given verbs (e.g. amaze, worry, occur, etc.) and one of the structures from the previous task.  

IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES

In the in-class part of the lesson, students look at a statement that is often used in motivational speeches about people achieving their dreams and comment on it using a prompt (e.g. It sounds as if…, it looks like…, it appears that…, etc.). Afterwards, they discuss questions about childhood dreams and their influence. Then, students use pairs of words to complete sentences about balancing dreams and practical life challenges. Students can work more with the phrases they created (e.g. make every moment count, spread oneself too thin, etc.) by answering short questions. Following that, students respond to the statements from the previous exercise using the structures with ‘It’. 

In this part of the lesson, students make predictions about the video they are going to watch by reading comments. Then, they watch the video about a man who pursues his two passions as a doctor and a chef and put the events in the correct order. After that, students try to answer questions about the video and watch it again to check their comprehension. Next, they look at ideas connected to the video and say to what extent they agree or disagree with them. Finally, students discuss statements about pursuing multiple careers versus focusing on a single goal. They answer questions using structures with ‘It’ and verbs studied in the lesson (e.g. appear, seem, bother, etc.). 

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students choose the correct words in unfinished sentences and continue them using words in brackets. 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.