I did this lesson with my second year advanced students and it went quite wll. The reason I like this lesson is because it has a couple of learning areas but doesn't really seem that way.
So basically I go through the powerpoint and practice a bit of past tense, they find this quite easy but it's good to activate their English skills before the lesson starts. Then I hand out the worksheet and we listen to the song. I think the pronunciation is quite easy but some of the students have said it's quite difficult~so before we listen to the song I let them know that the song has South African pronunciation so it will sound different ot an American song. We listen to the song twice and then I go through the song with them. While we go through each verse I ask them to underline the past tense words and I explain some expressions/words. During this time I point out the difference in accents especially during the second verse "So we cry and we crawl and we learn to walk..." You can hear it the pronunciation of 'crawl', 'laugh' and 'dance'. It's the first time that it has been really obvious to my students.
Once we have gone through the song I ask them to write me their story. They must choose a memory, their favourite, worst, most embarrassing memory and tell me the story, remind them that it should be in the past tense. The lead in that I use for this is the Korean TV program Strong Heart, basically celebraties go on this show and each week their is a different theme, each celebrity tells a story about this theme and the person with the best story wins Strong Heart. I ask them to hand in their storys and then I mark them and give them back to them the next week.
Hope you enjoy it :)
