10 first lesson ideas for KS3-4 English
In a first lesson, you ideally want students to enjoy working together on an engaging task. It's a great way to foster positive learning relationships and help students to feel more confident with their peers, who they may not know.
You'll find 10 fun lesson ideas to do just that in this set of first lesson ideas for English teachers, including microfiction writing tasks, drama activities, and debates which introduce the key skills of English: reading, writing and speaking and listening.
If you are looking for icebreakers, download 12 first lesson icebreakers to kickstart the fun!
Example lesson ideas from the resource:
Writers on a raft. As a twist on the popular balloon debate, 10 writers from the past and present have found themselves stranded on a raft that only holds 5 people! Who would students save from the piranha-infested waters, and why?
Pitch perfect. Bring in iconic products (fizzy drinks, chocolate bars, cereal packets etc.) and ask students to create a slogan or short written advert for the product. Explore some well-known adverts and slogans and identify the key persuasive techniques (repetition, alliteration/sibilance, exclamatory style, superlatives, listing etc.) before working in groups to create their own.
Sound circles. With a lively older class, this works as a warm-up to a text-focused lesson. Give each student one line from a new poem or a Shakespeare play. They should walk around the classroom, reciting their lines in different ways as instructed – whispering, as if puzzled, fearfully, aggressively, happily etc. As they become less self-conscious, ask them to stand in a circle, and try choral techniques such as echoing and repetition, and experiment with volume, adding gestures and movement for emphasis.
