In this lesson students learn 12 words for jobs and the structure "What do you do?". The jobs in this lesson are familiar to kids of all ages, so this can be taught to even young kids.
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Lesson Procedure: Warm Up and Maintenance: See our "Warm Up & Wrap Up" page.
New Learning and Practice: 1. Teach jobs vocab Before class, print off the jobs flashcards for the jobs in the song (farmer, bus driver, doctor, teacher, dentist, police officer, chef, hair dresser, nurse, soldier, fire fighter, student). If your students are older and can handle more vocab feel free to add more jobs.
NOTE: You'll notice that one of the jobs is "student". Although not technically a job, it is perfectly appropriate to answer the question "What do you do?" with "I'm a student". Now you are going to do actions for each job and your students will have to guess what job it is.
Start by looking at the first flashcard (don't show anyone) and do one of the below actions. Perhaps start with an easy one, like hairdresser, chef or bus driver. Encourage everyone to shout out their guesses – at this stage it is fine if students shout out the answers in their first language – you can correct and teach the new vocab as you go.
As each job is guessed, stick the flashcard onto the board and chorus the English word 3 times. Continue until all of the job flashcards are on the board.
Actions to do for jobs:
farmer: pretend to rake the soil, milk cows, pick vegetables from the ground and fruit from trees
bus driver: pretend to drive a bus, beeping the horn, collecting money and giving out tickets
doctor: pretend to give a student in injection in their arm, check their ears and inside mouth, and pretend to listen to their heart with a stethoscope
dentist: demonstrate with a student: get him/her open their mouth whist you look inside and pretend to check, drill and even pull out teeth!
police officer: hold out hand in the "Halt" position and blow a pretend whistle, shoot a gun and drive a police car with sirens blaring (say "nee-naa, nee -naa!")
chef: pretend to chop food and cook (stir a pot of food)
hair dresser: pretend to cut hair and blow dry hair
soldier: march around and pretend to shoot a rifle
fire fighter: pretend to hold a hose and fire water at an imaginary fire
student: point to everyone, pretend to write in an imaginary notebook
2. Play "Missing Flashcards" Now that you have all of the jobs flashcards on the board, tell everyone to close their eyes. Remove one of the flashcards. Then shout "Open your eyes" and point to the space where the flashcard was. Encourage everyone to shout out what it is, then reveal the card. The first person to shout out the correct answer can come to the board, say "Close your eyes" and remove a flashcard. Keep playing until every card has been guessed.