Past habits
Upper-intermediate level
Description
Materials
Main Aims
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To provide practice of past habits using "used to" and "would" in the context of animals and pets
Subsidiary Aims
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To provide fluency in the context of animals and pets
Procedure (37-45 minutes)
The students will have already tackled the vocabulary aspect of the text I'll be using, so I could ask the students what they have learned from the previous session and I'll have students name two crazy things that each person from the reading did.
Based on the sentences that the students underlined during the lead in, I will guide the students to the rules of " used to " and " would" and eventually lead them to the meaning of the both. I will ask them if "used to" and "would" are interchangeable. i.e: his twelve dogs would have dinner at the same table -> his twelve dogs used to have dinner at the same table. - and vice versa - ( I will write used to and would in different colors so they would eventually notice what the lesson is about ).
I will give students handouts and will have them fill the blanks with the correct grammar. After finishing this exercise, I will specify that "used to + infinitive " is used for past habits, actions and states but "would + infinitive " is only used for past habits and actions, not to talk about past states
Since students are now supposed to know the difference between "used to " and " would", I will ask them to do exercise 1 of the students' book.
Students are required to think of seven things that they did as children and that they no longer do. - I will add " sports" ," music" and " pets to the already mentioned themes which are " clothes", " food", " games" and "sleep" I would change the seating arrangement for the last exercise which focuses more on speaking and using what students have already learned during the class. As this is mainly a speaking exercise, I want students to practice speaking with different classmates rather than speaking with the people they usually speak to.
After having finished with speaking about their " past experiences " regarding the topics mentioned in the freer practice, students will discuss and compare their sentences their classmates.