LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• learn and practise useful vocabulary to describe experiences,
• discuss the ideas of home swapping and house sitting.

In this lesson students learn about home swapping and house sitting, watch a video and listen for specific information and learn vocabulary to talk about different experiences (e.g. handle an unexpected situation, meet expectations, a mixed experience, etc.). Students also play a quest game in which they make choices based on situations. 

WARM-UP & VIDEO

This ESL lesson starts with a warm-up activity. Students discuss questions about homes and houses and their dream holiday accommodations. After the warm-up, students read some statements and decide which might be true about home swapping. Then, students watch the video and check their answers. Next, students complete the sentences with missing words and watch the video again to check if they were right. Before moving to useful vocabulary to describe experiences, students discuss questions and say whether home swapping/house sitting is popular where they live and brainstorm what can make these experiences positive or negative.  

VOCABULARY TO DESCRIBE EXPERIENCES & QUEST GAME

In this part of the lesson, students look at the comments and decide whether they are positive or negative, about home swapping or house sitting, made by a guest or a homeowner. Then, they look at the comments again and match the phrases in bold (e.g. make an impression on someone, stress someone out, feel at home, etc.) to their meanings. To work more with the phrases, students complete the sentences with their ideas. As a wrap-up activity, they do a quest game in which they go through different scenarios connected to house sitting. You can also ask students to sum up their scenario using the vocabulary to describe experiences they’ve learned earlier.

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson plan also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students complete the gaps with key vocabulary and create questions. 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.