General topics: Weather

Author: Olha Madylus Level: starter/beginner, elementary Type: teaching notes

Introducing the topic

Cloudy, rainy, sunny, snowy, stormy, hot and cold these are good words to start with (with students who are able to grasp more and who have been studying English for over a year or two more words can be introduced). A lot of course books include pictures that illustrate this lexis clearly. If you cant find any, draw simple line drawings or find photographs or pictures in magazines. For hot and cold you could mime actions or give examples of things that are hot or cold: ice cream, fire etc.

Lexical links
A good lexical link for weather is clothes. They can match suitable clothes for the different weather words: coat, scarf, umbrella, sunglasses, swimsuit etc. A nice game is to bring in some of these items, call out a weather word and ask students to run and pick up a suitable article for that weather. (For small classes or divide your class into groups to play this game). To expand practice older students can write sentences like When its snowy I wear a coat and scarf.

Total physical response For the key lexis choose appropriate actions. For rainy walking hunched up pretending to hold an umbrella, for windy walking as if blown from side to side, for hot wiping off pretend sweat from brow etc. Play a game like that described above.

Music and song

The following song is a song on the theme of weather sung to the tune of Londons Burning, the words were written by Karen Hall & Jesse Barnecutt , two eighteen year old teacher trainees I had the delight to learn from on a recent course preparing them to teach English in India.

Although there may not be songs already written to practise the target vocabulary, it is not so difficult to adapt / write them and bring out the songwriter in you! Teacher can sing the song first and do appropriate actions. Do one verse at a time (slowly) so the children have plenty of time to digest meaning and get used to the words. It may take a couple of lessons for younger students to become confident/comfortable with the whole song. There will be a great feeling of success at singing the whole thing through.Bringing in the items of clothing will make meaning clear. The song combines music, total physical response and a nice lexical link. The sun is shining, The sun is shining, Get your sun hat, Get your sun hat, Its hot, Its hot Weather weather weather weather It's raining, Its raining, Get your brolly, Get your brolly, Im wet, Im wet Weather weather weather weather Its snowing, Its snowing, Get your scarf on, Get your scarf on, Im cold, Im cold Weather weather weather weather Thunderstorm, thunderstorm, Go inside, Go inside, Im scared, Im scared, Weather weather weather weather Its windy, Its windy, Hold your hat on, Hold your hat on, Blown away, Blown away Weather weather weather weather

Grammar
The topic lends itself nicely to contrasting is/was. Children can look out of the classroom window and see the weather and will understand its sunny today which can then be contrasted with yesterdays weather it was rainy yesterday.

Routines After the children have been initially introduced to weather vocabulary, at the beginning of every lesson ask the children whats the weather like today? and praise their responses. Children may say snowy on a hot sunny day not because they have forgotten the meaning but to make a joke dont correct too quickly. Making jokes in a foreign language is a sure sign that they are acquiring the language and enjoying using it hurrah! Have flashcards with a picture of and word for the weather conditions to stick onto the board or wall to reinforce the language.

Games

Prepare cards with weather words and matching pictures and play the pelmanism game.

Cross curricular
This topic lends itself well to learning about / revising some basic ideas about world geography. Children can begin by using the lexis to describe their country hot and sunny in the summer, rainy in the winter etc, and move on to talk about the weather in other countries/regions like the North Pole, the Sahara desert. A big map of the world is pinned to a wall and children write sunny/hot/windy etc on little stickers and then stick them onto countries they know about. It also helps to teach the English names for countries. This approach could lead into a nice wall display project: children collect pictures of countries (the pyramids of Egypt, Thai beaches, Alpine mountains etc) from magazines, newspapers, the Internet or draw their own and paste them onto big sheets of paper and write labels for each picture using the weather vocabulary and any other words they know to describe those countries. This allows an opportunity for children with higher language levels to use language they know and makes the classroom look bright and interesting. Also other students visiting the classroom will have opportunities to learn from the display.

Story
Introduce teddy to the students.Teacher, holding teddy and making appropriate movements and facial gestures and using slightly exaggerated intonation tells the story: Heres Mr Teddy. Hes going for a walk in the park. Its a lovely sunny day and hes very ... pause and encourage children to offer the missing word or phrase yes, hes hot, so he needs to wear his.yes, his shorts and t-shirt. He wants to eat a yes, an ice cream etc etc. The content of the story will depend on how much English the children know and how enthusiastically they offer suggestions. If they offer suggestions in the mother tongue, the teacher can accept them and repeat them in English, giving the children the opportunity to repeat them. Its a chance for children to be imaginative and creative and work together to produce a story.