LESSON OVERVIEW

With this writing lesson plan, pre-intermediate students watch a video about the last day at work and create farewell messages. 

WARM-UP & VIDEO

This writing lesson plan starts with a warm-up activity in which students complete different phrases for saying goodbye in English. They also decide which of them are more or less formal, and what situations they might be used in. After that, students discuss some questions about saying goodbye and what people can do to make saying goodbye special and not sad. Then, students watch the video in three parts. After the first two they comment on what people did and predict what is going to happen next. After the third part they discuss the feelings and motivations of the people in the video. 

VOCABULARY & WRITING

This part of the lesson starts with a conversation about writing farewell messages. Then, students read six farewell messages and complete them with provided words to create phrases (e.g. I’m looking forward to…, I’m grateful for…, stay in touch, best of luck). Next, they decide which messages were written by people leaving a company, and which to people who were leaving. They also look at the texts to find reasons why the people are leaving their companies. Before the last part of this writing lesson plan, students brainstorm other reasons why people might leave their job and how they might feel. Finally, students get a card with a situation to prompt them to write a farewell message. They need to use three phrases from the lesson. The phrases are provided on their cards. There are six cards to distribute among students. When the messages are ready, students work in pairs and read each other’s messages. They need to guess who they are written to and reply to them.