Chapter 5: Standing in the Spotlight: Presenting to the Class 77
Presentations for vocabulary lesson on bodies of water to meet certain standards:✓ Class profile: Mixed nationality class of six students studying English for
higher education.
✓ Level: Pre-intermediate.
✓ Materials: Photos of bodies of water.
✓ Problems: Difficulty remembering which word is which.
✓ Lesson aims: To teach ‘puddle’, ‘pond’, and ‘lake’ as bodies of water; to
continue the theme of the week,‘Water’; to aid project work.
A Presentation procedure that takes 12 minutes follows these steps:- Hold up a bottle of water. Ask students to take out their notebooks
and brainstorm adjectives that can describe water, for one minute. - Give out pens and ask students to write their adjectives in the desig-
nated section on the board.
Allow students to ask each other about any words they’re unfamiliar with.
- Draw a puddle shape on the board. Elicit from the students any ideas
about what to call water in this shape.
Make a tiny puddle of water on the desk to illustrate if possible.
- Now indicate the size of the body of water by drawing a child jumping
in it, complete with splashes. - Elicit ‘puddle’ if possible and drill the word chorally and individually.
Write the word, its part of speech and phonetic spelling on the board. - Highlight syntax.
Have students fill in the blank: A puddle of...
- Draw the same puddle shape again but this time draw a couple of fish
in it and a house nearby. Elicit and drill the word ‘pond’. Write the
word, its part of speech and phonetic spelling on the board. - Highlight collocates and compound nouns.
You can go through fish pond, freshwater pond, muddy pond (make the
picture on the board brown if you can).
Follow the same pattern for ‘lake’ but with a large boat in the water. Include
drilling and board work. Show how the name of the lake usually comes
second – Lake Erie, for example.