Sample Lesson Plan for "Top Notch 1"

I get a lot of people requesting that I post some sample lesson plans.  Of course, lesson plans are often not really transferable because we all have different goals for our classes, as well as use different books.  But, here is the lesson I taught this week for my Freshman English Classes at the Uni Level.   I use the book, "Top Notch 1."  My class is 90 minutes long, with no break.

1. "What's up?" Banter/going over the plan for the day/nagging about homework :) (5 minutes)

1. Warm-up review game (20 minutes).  In this case, I used the "Rock/Scissor/Paper" game.  The previous 2 weeks, we've been studying about advice (had better (not)/should (n't) and countable/uncountable nouns.  So I made up some strips of paper with matching problems/advice and questions such as, "Do you have any water?"  "Yes, I have some."

I cut them up and give each students 5 papers.  Then, I give them 10-15 minutes to stand up, walk around and find their corresponding partner.  Once they do, they play R/S/P and the winner takes both papers and gets one point.  At the end, the students with the most points get a small prize.

2. Grammar Lesson Presentation/book practice (15 minutes).  "I used to......But now I......."  I put 4 examples on the board and then the students did some practice in the book for 10 minutes.  We went over the answers together.

3. Conversation based on the grammar point (20 minutes).  I had students write 3 questions in their books..."Did you used to ________in high school/middle school/elementary school."  Then, I asked for volunteers to ask me these three questions.  Each one was followed with a follow-up question (example: Why didn't you smoke in high school? or "Who did you steal money from in middle school?")

Then, I turned the students loose to ask these 3 questions +3 follow-ups to their partner.

4. A group activity based on the grammar point (30 minutes).  In this case, each group of 3-4 had to choose 1 important invention (I elicited a few examples first and wrote them on the board to get them started).  They had to make 4-5 sentences and at least 2 had to use "....used to.... But now..."  ".....didn't use to.... But now...."   After about 15 minutes, the whole class listened to each group and I gave a small prize to the group that was the easiest to understand, interesting and had big-pictures ideas.