What's the weather like?

Face-to-face classroom lesson

This lesson focuses on the weather. Learners will sing a song to introduce the topic, then they will review and practise weather vocabulary using flashcards and worksheets or online activities. They will then make a weather wheel to practise talking about the weather in different seasons. For homework they will follow up by recording the weather for a week and then talking about it in the following class.

Learning outcomes

• Practise weather-related vocabulary through songs and rhymes
• To review weather vocabulary
• To practise talking about the weather and seasons
• To review adjectives – hot, cold, warm.

Online classroom lesson

In this lesson learners talk about the weather and views from their window. They initially meet vocabulary through a pre-lesson task, then they practise the vocabulary and pronunciation as well as recycle related language. Next they complete a simple research task and find out about the weather in another country, then predict each other's findings. Finally, they describe what they can see out their window and talk about what they would like to see, using their imaginations.

Learning outcomes

• Review vocabulary for talking about the weather
• Develop confidence in doing independent research
• Use prediction skills
• Practise speaking and listening skills
• Use creativity and imagination

Age/ Level

Aged 9-12 (CEFR A2)

Time

• 65 minutes (face-to-face)
• 115 minutes over two lessons (online)

Materials

• F2F lesson plan
• F2F presentation
• flashcards
  https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/flashcards/weather-flashcards
• weather activities
  https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/category/topics/weather
• weather wheel materials, per learner:
  • a large circle of card, with lines drawn dividing it into eight segments
  • two strips of card, to be the 'hands' of the wheel
  • a paper fastener
• Online lesson plan
• Online presentation

Face-to-face lesson (65 minutes)

Introduce the topic (15 minutes)

There are a number of weather-related songs you could use to introduce the topic of weather:
For younger children

• Incy Wincy spider: https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/listen-watch/songs/incy-wincy-spider

Incy wincy spider lyrics
Incy wincy spider climbed up the waterspout,
Down came the rain and washed poor incy out,
Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain,
So incy wincy spider climbed up the spout again.

• In the useful links section there is a video of a teacher demonstrating the actions for you to learn.
• Sing the song and do the hand actions – you can play the song video, but it may be better to sing it yourself so the learners focus on you and the actions. 
• Let the learners just listen and watch, but if they start trying to copy the actions that’s OK.
• Practise the actions together. Repeat the corresponding words or lines from the song as you demonstrate each action, but the learners should just focus on practising the actions. 
• Sing the song again. First, just encourage the learners to do the hand actions while you sing. Once they can do the actions, encourage them to sing along!

For older children

• I hear thunder. It is sung to the tune of Frère Jacques. See useful links for a video demonstrating the tune and actions.

I hear thunder lyrics
I hear thunder, I hear thunder,
Hark don't you, hark don't you.
Pitter patter raindrops,
Pitter patter raindrops.
I'm wet through,
SO ARE YOU!

• Sing the song line by line and either elicit actions or demonstrate the actions
• Practise the song, asking learners to copy the actions. 
• Once the learners have mastered the song, you can be ambitious and try and sing in a round! It might get a bit messy but can be fun.

Review: Weather vocabulary (10 minutes)

Using flashcards 

• Play a game to practise, such as slowly revealing the flashcards and learners shout out what they think it is. 
• For further practise, you could play one of the online games or give them one of the worksheets from LearnEnglish Kids.

Using presentation

• Display slide 2. Drill the vocabulary and check pronunciation.
• Display slide 3. Ask learners to point at the different weather. Eg. Point at sunny. Or elicit the weather types by pointing and asking, “What’s the weather like?”

Make a weather wheel (15 minutes)

• Tell learners they are going to make a weather wheel. Show them an example of one you have made. 
• Explain that four of the segments are for the seasons and four of the segments are for weather.
• Elicit what the seasons are and write the words on the board. Display slide 4. Then elicit what weather is typical for each season. One season has been indicated (Autumn/ Windy)
• Give out the circles of card. Learners write the names of the seasons in four of the segments and draw typical weather for each season in the other four segments. 
• Demonstrate how to assemble the wheel and hands using the paper fastener. You may wish to punch holes in the wheel and hands before the lesson if you think your learners will find it difficult.
• Give out the hands and the paper fasteners and allow learners to assemble their wheel and practise moving the hands. Monitor and support as needed.

Using the weather wheel (15 minutes)

• Demonstrate how to use the wheel. Show how you can match a season to a weather picture and give examples, such as ‘In summer it’s sunny’, ‘In winter it’s snowy.’ 
• Practise with a dictation activity. Say a sentence, such as ‘In autumn it’s windy.’ Learners should move the hands on the wheel to the right places. 
• Drill the sentences for the learners to practise. 
• For each sentence, you could first secretly move the hands on your wheel to a wrong position for that sentence (e.g. move them to ‘winter’ and ‘sunny’ for ‘In autumn it’s windy’), then after drilling show them your wheel – they will love shouting out, ‘No, that’s wrong!’ 
• Put the learners into pairs, and they dictate sentences to each other. They have to listen to their partner then move the hands on their wheel accordingly.
• Alternatively, in pairs one learner secretly moves the hands on their wheel to a certain position, and the other learner has to guess what it is. 

Setting homework (10 minutes)

• Learners record the weather for the week. Ask them to copy a table like in Appendix 1 into their notebooks (you might want to put today’s or tomorrow’s day as the first day)
• Learners should complete the table for each day with a picture and a short sentence, e.g. ‘It’s sunny.’

Follow-up

• Learners can compare their homework weather tables. 
• Introduce the use of ‘was’ and in pairs they can see if they have the same, for example by saying, ‘On Monday it was sunny.’ ‘Yes, correct!’ or ‘No, on Monday it was cold!’

Useful links

• Incy Wincy spider: https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/listen-watch/songs/incy-wincy-spider 
• Actions for Incy Wincy spider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufw63gi0hEs
•  Actions for I hear thunder: https://youtu.be/-j_ICBgLvR0?si=4mD1bV4Nt4vwCRAc 
• Demonstration of singing in a round: https://youtu.be/Q0ZnbjIP3u4?si=rGjXEE3nxuQnMQae 

Online lesson one (55 minutes)

Before the lesson

• Before the lesson, or for the previous lesson’s homework, ask learners to play one or more of the following games on LearnEnglish Kids. These word games have audio for each language item and you can encourage your learners to listen to the audio as well so that they are also exposed to the pronunciation of the word. The game(s) you assign will depend on your learners.

1. https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/word-games/weather-1
2.  https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/word-games/weather-2 

• Make a list of your learners and write the name of a different country next to each name. You’ll need this information for the research task.
• Before you start the lesson:

1. Test your microphone and camera to make sure they work.
2. Make sure that you have the accompanying PowerPoint open and shared.

At the start of the lesson

• Welcome the learners as they arrive:

1. Check that you can all hear and see each other.
2. Check that they can see the first slide.
3. If they can’t, ask them (or ideally an adult they have present) to check their settings or troubleshoot in the way you have shown them previously. You may need to write this in the chat facility if they cannot hear you.
    

Tips:

• Consider having a short task for the learners to do until they have all arrived. For example, you could have a poll set up (if your platform has this function) or a simple activity where they write in the chat, such as to say what they’ve done that week. 
• Consider muting learners’ microphones after greeting them to avoid having too much background noise when you get started. Tell them if you do this and explain why. 
• You could also suggest that if possible they use a headset with a mic rather than their device’s in-built speakers and mic.

Warmer (10 minutes)

• Display slide 2
• Tell your learners that the missing word from the tongue twister rhymes with not, and ask them to guess it (hot). Explain what whether and put up with mean if necessary. 
• Practise saying each part of the tongue twister separately and then as a whole. Start slow and then the learners can see how fast they can get!

Pronunciation focus (10 minutes)

• Display slide 3
• Tell the learners that for the next activity, they need to tell you the word, and they need to watch your mouth. Then mute your microphone! Say a word really clearly and see if the learners can work out the word from how your mouth moves.

Vocabulary focus (10 minutes)

• Turn your microphone back on and run through the words on slide 3 asking learners to repeat the words after you.
• Display slide 4 and nominate individual learners to say the words. E,g. “On picture 3. What’s the weather like?”

Demonstration (5 minutes)

• Ask ‘What’s the weather like?’ and ask learners to repeat the question.
• Mime being cold and prompt learners to say “It’s cold”
• Repeat this with two more types of weather. Then tell learners they are going to play a weather game. 

Practice (10 minutes)

Note: For this activity all learners should have their cameras on.

• Play a game of backs to the computer. Put learners in two teams: Team A and Team B

Tip: Write the names of who is in each team on the whiteboard (if the platform has one) or in the chat. Ask learners to act cold if they are in Team A and hot if they are in Team B to check their understanding.

• Nominate one learner from each team to physically turn around away from the screen. Ask all learners except the learners with their backs to the screen to turn off their microphones.
• Display slide 5. Tell learners they will be miming the weather to their team member to guess. Display slide 6.
• The two nominated learners turn back around. Prompt them to ask the question ‘What’s the weather like? Drill this again if needed.
• Everybody else mimes the word and the first of the two learners to raise their hand and say the weather word gets a point for their team.
• Repeat this activity using slides 7 – 16 with two different learners from each team turning around each time.
• At the end announce which is the winning team. 

Setting up research task (10 minutes)

• This activity can be set for the learners to do in the break time or as homework for before the next class.
• Assign each learner a country and set them the challenge of finding out the capital city of that country and what the weather’s like there.
• Share your screen and display this website: https://worldweather.wmo.int/en/home.html. Demonstrate the research activity by typing Malaysia into the search section
• Ask learners what is the capital city (Kuala Lumpa is given). Ask them “What is the weather like?”
• Display slide 17. Tell learners you are going to assign them all a country and their challenge is to find out the capital city of that country and what the weather’s like there.
• Share the link to World Weather in the chat.

Online lesson two (60 minutes)

Warmer (5 minutes)

• Play a few rounds of Stand up if.
• Ask learners to stand up if they’re wearing something green. The fastest learner to stand up can give the next instruction, e.g. Stand up if you’ve eaten some fruit today.
• Continue with different learners giving the instructions. You can also ask the learners to vary the initial action, e.g. Turn around if or Jump if. 

Predicting and sharing research (15 minutes)

• Ask learners to find the research they did. Choose a learner to start and ask them to say the capital city of the country they were assigned, but not the weather. 
• Ask the other learners to predict what they think the weather’s like in that city. Then ask the first learner to tell everyone the weather they found out. 
• Continue with the other learners.

Speaking and listening and speaking practice (25 minutes)

• Ask the learners to look out a window and tell you what weather they can see today. Do they like this weather?
• What else can they see when they look out the window? Elicit some examples, for example buildings, a road, cars, a yard, etc. Depending on your learners encourage them to be descriptive, for example tall buildings, a wide/narrow road, parked/moving cars, etc. 
• What would they like to see? Ask learners to close their eyes for a few moments and imagine. It could be sunny, snowing, raining lemonade, a beach, a park, the moon, Disneyland, chocolate trees, Superman flying past – encourage and prompt their imaginations!
• Draw the scene your learners have described and show them your drawing. 
• For the next activity the learners will ideally work in pairs in breakout rooms. 

Using breakout rooms

 

• Tell learners that they are going to work in small groups and take turns to describe what they would like to see when they look out their window. 
• Their partners need to listen and draw a picture. Emphasise that the drawing does not have to be beautiful! 
• Remind the learners of the ‘breakout room rules’ before you move them there, for example speaking English only, staying on task, etc. 
• Send learners in small groups to breakout rooms to do the activity. 
• Monitor and support.
• ring learners back to the main room and ask them to share and describe their drawing (their team members can support with the description).

Without using break out rooms

• Assign learners to groups of 5. Ask learners to have their notebooks and pens ready.
• Mute all microphones except for the first group of 5. Tell learners they must listen and draw.
• Nominate one learner from the first group  to tell you the weather. Ask the other 4 group members to tell you one thing they can see from the window.
• The other learners listen and draw.
• Nominate one learner to share their drawing and explain what they’ve drawn. 
• Repeat until all the groups have spoken.

Cooler (10 minutes)

• To finish, play a few rounds of Kim’s game. Display images of different types of weather. Stop screen sharing, cover or remove one of the images then screen share again. 
• Ask the learners to identify which one is missing. Slide 18 has some images you could use although you may wish to choose a different selection of vocabulary.

Setting homework (5 minutes)

• For homework, learners can draw and write a description of what they imagined seeing out their window. Display slide 19.

At the end of the lesson

• Praise the learners for their participation and work and tell them you’re looking forward to seeing them again in the next lesson.
• Make sure they know how to exit the platform and wait until they all leave before leaving yourself.

Further ideas and resources

• The Ali and the magic carpet story on LearnEnglish Kids is related to the weather, and learners who are registered on the site can write comments on the ‘Your turn’ page about weather:

1. https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/short-stories/ali-and-the-magic-carpet 
2. https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/your-turn/weather