1. Preparation
Level Intermediate (**Large class with varying student levels**)
Lesson Length 45 mins
Objective To learn the vocabulary of character traits
Target Language 1. Anxious 10. Humorous
2. Brave 11. Lazy
3. Charismatic 12. Loving
4. Clever 13. Mean
5. Compassionate 14. Mature
6. Confident 15. Noisy
7. Foolish 16. Quiet
8. Friendly 17. Thoughtful
9. Greedy 18. Wise
Assumed Knowledge The class knows basic knowledge of the English language. They know basic
verb conjugations, most common words, and many grammar beginner
grammar rules.
Anticipated Problems Although the class is labeled “intermediate”, it is a large class, and will have
students of each skill level, including beginner and advanced. Therefore I
must be able to cater to the levels of everyone. Also, since this is a big
classroom, I will have to work harder to maintain the attention of the
students.
Solutions Arrange students into predetermined groups. For some activities, I will place
all the beginner students into a group, all the intermediate into another, and
all the advanced students into one of their own. This way, I can selectively
choose activities for each group depending on their skill level. For other
activities, I will try to divide up the advanced students and place them into
separate groups, this way they can help answer the weaker students’
questions and guide the groups.
Preparation and Aids Prepare a PowerPoint with images of different people who display an
individual character trait accurately. E.g. on a slide with the word “humorous”
there will be a person making every else laugh, possibly a famous comedian.
Also on the slide the word “gracioso” (Spanish for “humorous”) will be
displayed in case the student portrays the image as ambiguous.
(Continued on Page 2)
2. Lesson Plan
Stage Activity Interaction Timing
1 Warm-up: Prompt the class with the question, “What type of
person are you” and have them write a paragraph on a piece of
paper without knowing that the lesson plan is about character
traits yet.
T-S 3 mins
2 Presentation: Ask anyone if they know what a character trait is. If
they don’t know, tell them in Spanish (rasgo de personalidad) they
will all exhale in understanding. Explain to them in English the rest
of the presentation and what they are (Although they may already
know in Spanish, it’s good for them to hear an explanation in
English)
T-S 4 mins
3 PowerPoint: Show the students the PowerPoint I designed, which
has 20 preselected character traits, along with a picture of a
person representing the trait and also a Spanish translation
included to rule out ambiguity.
T-S 9 mins
4 Practice: Drilling: Go over the PowerPoint, this time without the
English and Spanish subtitles, and tell them to say aloud which
words the pictures represent. Do a few rounds of this.
S-T 4 mins
5 Warm-up Exchange: Tell the students to switch with a partner the
warm-up paragraph that each person has written. Now once the
student has his/her partner’s paper, they must circle all the
character traits that the person unknowingly wrote down for the
warm-up activity and add 3 more synonymous character traits to
match the ones the first person initially wrote down. After, they
must switch back papers so they both have their original copy, and
write a new paragraph describing their personality traits, this time
adding many more new words they just learned.
S-S
PW
10 mins
6 Cloze handout: Give them a handout with sentences with missing
words where they need to accurately fill in character traits.
S-S 5 mins
7 Production: Have the students get into small groups and talk
about the character traits of their parents amongst each other.
S-S
GW
8 mins
8 Poll: Elicit from students their most admired character trait. On
the board I will have a tally of the most common ones.
S-T 2 mins
