This lesson teaches students how to name items of clothing and also give an opinion about them. They need a basic knowledge of the present simple and present continuous tenses to do so make sure you teach these tenses before you use this plan.

Lesson overview

Doing a warmer activity

  3 minutes

Whizz through the alphabet from A to Z. Get each student in turn to say the next letter.. Then try it again from Z to A.

Introducing the topic

  7 minutes

Procedure: Make seven simple flashcards using pictures of items of clothing.

Write the word and phonemes on the back of each flashcard.

If possible, give each item of clothing a different colour so that your students can practise colours and so that visual learners remember the pictures better.

Start the lesson by writing ‘clothes’ on the board as a heading. Drill the word. Quickly show all the flashcard images and say, ‘These are clothes!’

Clothes is a tricky word. I must admit I teach ‘close’ instead for students who just can’t manage the pronunciation.

Now deal with the flashcards one by one. As you show each picture, say the word and get the students to repeat. Don’t show the spelling until you’ve drilled the pronunciation of each word several times.

You need to point out that trousers are always plural, and highlight the single and plural form for ‘shoe’.

Students usually struggle to absorb any more than seven new language items per lesson. That’s why I don’t include the word ‘pair’ in this lesson plan. Have a lesson on pairs another day (glasses, gloves, socks, and so on).

Using the present continuous with ‘wear’

  10 minutes

Procedure: Draw the outline of a person on the board; a simple figure will do. Point to the figure and elicit the clothing to put on it. For example, you point to the torso and say, ‘ Trousers?’ or ‘Shoes?’ Pick a student, who should say ‘Shirt!’ or ‘Jacket!’. Elicit the colour also.

Make sure students understand that the adjective comes before the noun. So they need to say ‘a blue shirt’ not ‘a shirt blue’.

Continue the activity by pointing to the legs and the feet and draw on the clothes that the students call out as you go. Ideally, use coloured markers – or just write a label for the colour.

Now show the students how to construct a full sentence about clothing in the present continuous. Write a sentence like this on the board, based on your drawing:

He/she … … a blue shirt, black trousers and brown shoes.

Elicit from students suggestions for the first missing word by pointing to the gap. If the students need extra help then narrow down the choices by saying:

‘He am? No! He are? No!’

Try to elicit ‘He is’. Write ‘is’ in the gap and then move on to the verb. Write ‘to wear’ on the board somewhere underneath the sentence. Hopefully, students remember how to construct a sentence in the present continuous and can say ‘he is wearing’. (You could use the contraction (’s) if students know it.) In any case, write wearing in the gap.

He/she is wearing a blue shirt, black trousers and brown shoes.

Drill the sentence chorally and individually around the class.

  3 minutes

Next, point out what people are wearing in the class. Get students to make sentences about their friends to check they can use sentence present continuous sentence structure.

• T: Today Pedro is wearing a white shirt. Pedro tell me about Rashida.
• St: Rashida is wearing …

  10 minutes

Explain and gesture for students to draw a person in their notebooks. Show the students how to hold the book so that nobody else can see their pictures. Tell them to draw clothes on the figure. Use gestures and simple language, so pretend to be drawing and give a commentary.

‘Red jacket, yellow shirt, blue trousers, green shoes … ’

Students now design their own outfits for the figures they’ve drawn.

Have a pre-prepared drawing of your own. When everyone has finished drawing, hand the picture to a student and ask whether the picture is of a man or a woman. Ask what he/she is wearing. Draw a figure on the board dressed in an outfit like the one the student’s describing.

Now put the students into pairs. In each pair, one student is A and the other is B. Student A needs to put down her pen and Student B needs to be ready to draw on a new page. Student A must dictate her picture to Student B. For example:

It’s a man. He is wearing a grey shirt and a grey tie. His jacket is black …

Then it is Student B’s turn to dictate. Finally, both students compare their pictures.

Giving student feedback

  5 minutes

Correct any errors you spotted during the picture dictation activity. Students often have some trouble with the present continuous, and they may mispronounce some of the vocabulary. Or else ask a few individuals to tell you about their drawings.

Working on positives and negatives

  10 minutes

Use one of the students as an example and write an erroneous sentence on the board; for instance:

Lucas is wearing a blue skirt.

Ask the students whether it’s a good or bad sentence and thereby elicit a correction. So, in this example the student crosses out skirt and writes shirt instead.

Now write the name of another student on the board and get someone else up to complete the sentence. Whisper to the student what to write and make it something untrue so that the other students will correct the sentence.

Lucas is wearing a blue skirt shirt.

Tell the students to write sentences in their books about what each person in the class is wearing. Half the sentences should be right and the other half wrong.

After the students have finished, remind them how to make a present continuous sentence negative. Use your sentences on the board to demonstrate.

• Lucas isn’t wearing a blue skirt. He is wearing a blue shirt.
• Audrey isn’t wearing black trousers. She is wearing black shoes.

Students now correct their untrue sentences in their books.

Go around the room and monitor. Make sure the students write the new sentences correctly. As feedback, ask students to read out what they wrote and discuss any problems.

Exploring fashion styles

  8 minutes

In a very obvious way, put on some items of clothing you’ve brought along or secretly taken from the students, where appropriate (there is a usually a scarf on the back of someone’s chair). For example, throw a jacket over your shoulder, roll up your trousers, and take off one shoe. Pose like a fashion model and ask the students whether they like your clothes. Elicit opinions around the class.

• T: Do you like my new clothes Mikako?
• St: No, I don’t like your shoes.

Put students in groups of three or four and give each a set of photos from fashion magazines. Make sure they can say:

I (don’t) like his/her/the …

They now discuss their opinions, saying what they do and don’t like. Afterwards, ask one or two students about specific pictures.

Doing a cooler activity

  4 minutes

Hold up the flashcards again and elicit both the vocabulary and spelling for each item.

Extension activities

This lesson covers only seven items of vocabulary, but students need to learn words for many more items of clothing. Build up the entire wardrobe by teaching words like hat, scarf, socks, gloves, belt, jumper, trainers and so on.

A fun activity is to send one or two students out of the room and get the others to change their clothing somehow. They might put on a hat, or take off a jumper. When they return, the students who went out have two minutes to say what has changed. They can use the present continuous for this.

You’re wearing that hat now. He’s wearing Pedro’s jacket …

If you have an old clothing catalogue or two, bring them in and set a timed task in which students have to list the page numbers for various items of clothing. For example:

Which page has a long, blue skirt for £17.99? Page …