This lesson activity is quick and easy to prepare. Find all those coupons you probably have already in a kitchen drawer, or cut new ones out of newspapers and magazines.
Coupons for Food, Furniture and Service Products
Depending on the rationale behind the lesson, the teacher can choose a particular theme such as food, furniture or services and decide on one of them. Alternatively, a combination of any or all coupons can also be used just to broaden the vocabulary base and offer more options for the activity itself. Ensure that there are enough coupons so that each student in the class receives one.
Lesson Idea Using Coupons in the Classroom
Vocabulary Brainstorm: To begin, brainstorm the students to come up with a list of words that apply to the theme being reviewed, such as furniture, marketing words, grocery store items or pieces of clothing.
Reading the Coupon: Hand out a coupon to each student. Have students read every word on the coupon and use their dictionaries to look up items they don’t know.
Pair work for reading aloud: Pair the students. Each student has to read his or her coupon to the other student.
Bartering or exchanging: The idea in this part of the activity is that each student convinces the other to exchange coupons. For example, “My coupon has a better offer. My pizza has more toppings.” If students are happy with their own coupon they can refuse to exchange.
Continued pair work: The students then find another partner and the process is repeated. The reading and bartering are carried out once more. Depending on the size of the class or the desire of the teacher to have the students repeat the process for a given number of times, the pairwork can be continued or cut at a certain point.
Writing Activity Using Free Coupons in ESL Lessons
The next part of the lesson is to have the students do some creative work with pen and colors. The students create a coupon for any product of their choice. This can be done on large posters which can be placed on a notice board, or they can be done in the same size as real coupons.
This segment of the lesson can also be done together with the computer or art teacher to produce some interesting graphic work. The activity can be used as part of a lesson, taking 15 to 20 minutes or lengthened to take a complete a lesson to develop all the skills necessary to advance in new language acquisition.
Working with coupons allows for individualized work incorporating reading, conversation and writing with so little preparation. It offers an extremely effective means of teaching real-life language to ESL learners.
Lucille Lever - Creative teaching ideas can be incorporated into any kind of lesson. As a teacher of ESL and creative drama for more than 30 years, in a ...
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