Lesson Plans

Shopping

This is a pretty solid lesson. Students liked naming items and prices, as well as creating their own stores. For some reason the kids love to yell as loud as possible when reading from the book, so you might have to crack some skulls when you do that part of the lesson.

Grade Level
4
5
Lesson

Cars and Trucks

This is a grace seven lesson that I designed for a lesson at the training center. My actual teaching of it was about mediocre because I only had two students who were both shy. But I really like the lesson plan, and I think it would be good for a small class or a smart class. Maybe make it a little easier for a class of forty, but I think it is pretty good.

Grade Level
7
8

My House

This lesson worked pretty well. Maybe not quite as well as the previous lesson about My Room, but it was still really good. The kids like to play "Where's Sam" and they especially liked to put Sam in the bathroom.

Grade Level
3
Lesson

Seasons

This lesson worked pretty well for grade two because it was in their book and it was an epic fail for grade one. I'm pretty sure they didn't even know what a season was by the end of the lesson. The flashcards that are included are really good, but they don't work so well if they are in poor color. If the colors are washed out, they all kind of look the same and confuse the students.

Grade Level
1
2
Lesson

Toys

This is a very generic kindergarten lesson. As usual, it is probably best to just keep them occupied and quiet as much as possible.

Grade Level
0
Lesson

Pets

This lesson worked out fine, and there are some good activities. Maybe it was a little boring though so try to make it more interesting if possible. The kids that had this lesson in their books were really good at using the adjectives, but the other kids had a hard time understanding anything other than big and small.

Grade Level
1
2
Lesson

My Room

The third grade students really loved this lesson. They came up with a ton of words for things that were in their rooms, and they didn't have any trouble understanding or remembering words like window, corner etc. They really liked the sentences and the drawing activity too. Honestly I was surprised how well this one turned out. Part of it may have been that I was right in sync with their Chinese teacher at the time, but even still, they really dug this lesson. I didn't use any flashcards at all. Maybe the kids like that method.

Grade Level
3
Lesson

Weather

This is actually two different lesson plans about weather. One for Kindergarten, and one for grades 1 and 2. There are some good ideas and activities in there, but you might want to add more fun stuff or games for them. The thermometer flashcards are great. I would recommend using them.

Grade Level
0
1
2

Camping

This kindergarten lesson worked out really well. The kids like d the story in my powerpoint. I recommend taking the pictures from the powerpoint and using them as the flashcards so that the students don't get confused. The camping song also works really well. Although I only ended up using the first verse.

Grade Level
0
Lesson
Other Files

Relationships

This is kind of a continuation of the family lesson. The family lesson is primarily a vocabulary lesson to teach the words for family members such as Mother, Father, Sister, etc. This lesson emphasizes that one person has different relationships to different people. For example there is a person that I call grandma, but my dad doesn't call her grandma, he calls her mom.

Grade Level
3
4

Places

Here is the kindergarten version of the places lesson. All of my kids kept saying "roo" instead of "zoo". I kind of wanted to record it, but didn't have the means at the time.

Grade Level
0
Lesson

Jobs

This is another typical kindergarten lesson. I really think that in Kindergarten the quality of the class will depend a lot more on your tolerance for their shananigans than your lesson plan.

Grade Level
0
Lesson

Weekdays

This is a fun lesson and easy to teach. The activities are good, and if you're looking for another activity it would probably be a good opportunity to play what's missing. the flashcards are easy too: Just the days of the week in English.

Grade Level
1
2
3
Lesson

Furniture

This should be a good lesson because the vocab is easy, and a lot of the furniture (desk, chair, bench) is present in the classroom. But be sure you don't get decent flashcards.

Grade Level
1
2
Lesson

Fruit Salad

This lesson was really short (as you can see by the plan) so maybe think of more to add. I also do a long (15minutes) review of the previous lesson for my kindergarten classes so that it doesn't all leave their brains right away.

Grade Level
0

Sports

This is another really good one. I liked teaching this lesson a lot. It is a vocab heavy lesson so that makes it easy to teach. And it is about sports which primary school students are always excited about. They like to learn the English names for their favorite sports. And they like to act out the sports.

Because of Holidays and canceled classes, my schedule got a little weird at this point so I also made a "Sports -- Part 2" lesson for some classes. It is attached also.

Grade Level
4
5
Lesson
Other Files

Places

This lesson works fine, but was not too exciting for the kids. If you can think of a good fun activity to add to the plan it would probably be a good idea. Even so the lesson stands fine as is.

Grade Level
1
2
Lesson

Flavors

This is just another kindergarten lesson. Keeping the kids in line is hard as usual, but all things considered this is a fine lesson.

Grade Level
0
Lesson

Nationalities

This is a really good and fun lesson. It is one of the few lessons that I truly enjoyed teaching. Everyone loves placing the flags on the board, and if your lesson ends early they can play that game forever without getting board so filler material is not problem. It is also cool to find out that some of your students are from countries you wouldn't have expected. I have a girl from Venezuela and she was really excited to put her Venezuelan flag on the board for this lesson.

Grade Level
3
4

Our School

There is nothing too special about this lesson. The kids liked it alright, and it was not too rough to teach. Maybe start by saying "Our school is ___" and write the name of your school. If you can write it in Chinese and you might get a round of applause. I happened to use photos from my actual school (Thanks Melinda!) as flashcards and they liked that.

Grade Level
5
Lesson

What Do You See?

This is a pretty easy lesson to teach because the kids like saying "I see a _____". But I Spy is kind of hard to explain to them. If you have time stick with it because it is fun in the end, but it time is tight then I would recommend skipping it because it will be frustrating to spend time explaining the game if they never get it.

Grade Level
1
2

Feelings

This is a pretty good kindergarten lesson because it is vocab heavy, and the body language is easy. The kids like to act angry and scared a lot. This would probably be a good lesson for grade 1 as well so I've tagged it accordingly.

Grade Level
0
Lesson

Jobs

Nothing too special or noteworthy about this one. It worked just fine but not super-great.

Grade Level
1
2
Lesson

Activities

This is a vocabulary heavy lesson. In my opinion that makes it easy to teach because the kids can just memorize the words, and there is a myriad of games readily available. Many of them are included in this lesson plan. I would highly recommend this one.

Grade Level
3
4
5

My House

This lesson went okay for me. As always, being sure you have good flashcards is essential. My cards were not that good, and the lesson suffered because of it. Also, maybe one more fun activity or song would be useful. But I think the activities I have here are pretty good.

Grade Level
1
2
Lesson

Health / Seeing a Doctor

Personally I really like this lesson plan. It didn't go very well when I taught it, but I think it might be because I had accidentally gotten ahead of the Chinese teachers at that point. The kids really liked it when I drew a picture of a kid barfing on the board (attached).

Grade Level
5
Lesson
Other Files

Life and Changes

This lesson Plan was provided by Yippie. I added the activity for changes because that's what my students were studying with their Chinese teacher, so they actually knew about it. I didn't follow the lesson plan very well, and spent a lot of time on the changes part. The students really liked that activity. I also find that my fifth graders are too cool to sing so I do a different warm-up activity or skip it altogether. I never taught this lesson to sixth grade, but Yippie marked it as appropriate for that grade, so I've tagged it accordingly.

Grade Level
5
Lesson

Birthday and Age

This plan was given to me by my company, and I think it may have been written by another teacher although I'm not really sure. It worked well for me, but I found that it went better if I spent more time on the beginning of the lesson, and emphasized that a person gets one year older on their birthday, and then just talked about birthday parties at the end. The kids loved the picture of mei yang yang that I used.

Grade Level
3
4

Transportation

This lesson was a little short, and I had to create some filler material at the end, so if you use it I would recommend adding at least one activity. Also, I find that playing "what's missing" works best for things like weekdays or months where there is a finite set of answers. For example in this lesson some students might say that "Scooter" was missing, but that's not right because scooter was never there to begin with.

Grade Level
1
2

Rainy Day

This is a lesson that was supplied by Worlda (specifically Yippie) for my second week of teaching. I didn't do super well with it because it was only my second week, but it seems like a fine lesson. I also drew a big picture including sun, clouds, rain, and a person holding an umbrella on the board.

Grade Level
0
Lesson