In this ESL lesson plan, students will use the present simple tense to talk about daily routines and activities. Students will practice describing their daily routine while playing fun classroom games. All the materials for the games and activities in this English lesson can be downloaded below.
Grammar and Expressions used in this lesson plan:
This lesson plan will focus on daily routines using the present simple tense. We use the present simple tense to talk about things we do regularly. When talking about daily routine, we use the present simple form of the verb.
Before introducing the keywords and expressions for the lesson, it is important to put the target language into context. A great way to do this when teaching daily routines is to ask the students about what they did before they came to school. Ask them what the first thing they did that day was.
Elicit from them that the first thing they did was ‘wake up’. Write this on the board, and ask students what they did next.
Once you have a few activities on the board, ask students which of those activities they do every day, and at what time they usually do them.
This should give students a clear idea that the lesson will be about activities they do regularly. That is, their daily routine.
Using these daily activity flashcards, introduce the key phrases for the lesson. Ask students to repeat after you and practice many times. Once students have practiced the daily routine phrases, introduce the key expressions. For example,
Once students have practiced enough, it’s time to play a fun guessing game and practice daily routine expressions.
This next activity is a printable board game about daily routines. Before class, print out this board game and prepare some dice. Give one dice and one board game to each pair of students. To start, students should place their eraser at the ‘Start’ square.
Next, one student should roll the dice and move their eraser. Then they should make a dialogue with their partner based on the picture in the square that they landed on.
For example, if they land on the ‘brush your teeth’ picture, they should ask their partner, “What time do you brush your teeth?” and their partner should answer.
Then, it is the other student’s turn to roll the dice. The aim of the game is to get to the star in the middle of the board game to win a point. The only way to get to the star is to land on squares in the middle (the ones with the arrows). After winning a point, that student then goes back to the start square.
Continue this game for 5 or 10 minutes, and the student with the most points at the end is the winner.
