Summary / This lesson gives students a chance to work more creatively and realistically with the relative clause format they have previously been introduced to. It aims to solidify their knowledge of the grammar's logic as they build full sentences from simple clauses they have invented, and demonstrate their use in context.
Main Skill / Writing
Grammar Examples / Give me book whichI haven't read.
We ate the biscuits thatshe brought for us.
Materials Needed /
- Lyrics sheets: “Happy Xmas”
- “Separating relative clauses” worksheets
- “A letter to my hometown” worksheets
Procedure / Part 1: Greeting and warm-up activities – 10 minutes
- Class greeting.
- Students sing along once to “Happy Xmas”, by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
- Criss Cross. One sideways row of students stands up and is asked a basic English question by the ALT. The first student to offer an appropriate answer sits down. This continues until one student remains standing. All the students in the same row longways then stand and the game begins again.
- The JTE reviews the grammar point for the class, focussing on how sentences can be constructed with two basic ideas (clauses) and a relative pronoun.
- Students receive the “separating relative clauses” worksheet and complete it. It requires them to identify the two basic clauses that make up given sentences.
- Students are introduced to the premise of the next activity: they are visiting a foreign country, for example on school exchange, and writing to a friend back home. The “a letter to my hometown” worksheet guides students through the process of creating a relative clause sentence from basic sentences. Relative clause sentences will then be used for the content of a letter. The exercise has four steps, which the JTE explains to the students at the beginning of each.
- First; students nominate a country to imagine themselves visiting.
- Second; they must convert a given set of basic sentences into isolated relative clauses by moving the object to the beginning of the sentence and adding “which” or “that” after the object.
- Third; students choose three of the relative clauses they have just made. These will be used to describe their visit overseas. They must invent and add a descriptive sentence to complement each clause.
- Fourth; students combine each pair of clauses and descriptions from step three and write them into the letter template. When this is completed they will have three full relative clause sentences. They must also add their name, the country they are going to, and the name of a classmate who will receive the letter.
- On the reverse side of their letters, students may draw a cartoon or doodle illustrating what they have imagined themselves doing overseas. They then explain it to their classmate and present it as a postcard.