Hey All,

I designed this lesson for my 1st grade HS schoolers (Yes, I work at an ALL GIRLS high school!) and it's been very popular. I usually sandwich it between some pretty dry lessons about grammar. You can do it in one or two classes.

1. Play the video through without giving the students the worksheet. Just let them listen and watch (be prepared, there may be a lot of squealing) and ask them to try to remember any enlgish words they hear. List the words they heard on the board.
2. Give a brief introduction to the song, who Taylor Swift is, explain that in the song Taylor Swift is comparing her relationship with her boyfriend to a love story like Romeo & Juliet.
3. Hand out the lyrics worksheet. Read through the alphabetized list of words at the bottom of the sheet together.
4. Play the video again, slowly, pausing every 3rd or 4th line to give the students timee to write down the words they hear.
5. Play the video a 3rd time, alittle faster, pausing every 7th or 8th line, to let them fill in any words they missed the first time around.
6. Take up the missing words together. In my classes I either put the girls into teams and give points for each missing word they tell me or have all the students stand up and let them only sit down when they give me a correct answer (there are 38 blank spaces, my classes all have 36 - 39 students) Either way, they'll be motivated to tell you what's missing. Write the correct answers on the board so they can correct any mistakes they've made.
7. Play the video again if you have time for the girls to listen all the way through with all the words.

2nd Class
1. Play the video again to refresh their memories. Make sure you have told the students to bring their worksheets to class. Go through the power point and explain the vocabulary, colloquial expressions.
2. Divide the class into groups of 4 and give them each a group assignment worksheet. it's very simple, the goal of the activity is just to get them speaking english, it shouldn't take them very long to to finish their stories. Have the groups take turns presenting  their "love stories" to the class. I use the group assignment to help with my assessment of the students speaking abilities, so they hand their papers to me after wards.

Here's the link for the video on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xg3vE8Ie_E&feature=fvst

Thanks for the feedback, Nancy! I'm glad to hear that the boys also enjoy it. I noticed one thing this week while I was doing the second class. There is a mistake on the group assignment document. It's has two story templates per page and the first story template is missing a line #3. No idea how that happened, but here it is, corrected.

Love this idea! Thank you so much. I'm always looking for ways to work in grammar, and I also teach all girls high school, so they love taylor swift.

I added a bit more to the first lesson to incorporate a speed game, then I shortened the handout. Instead of candy, I let the winning team have free time instead of writing (but they still take the handout for self-study referance) and the losing teams write for the remaining time.

I'd already done a lesson on homophones, so I changed "homonyms" to "homophones" for my students review benefit.

Depending on the class and time, you can remove slides from the game. The game I played in pairs or threes, and each got a blank paper for writing. Co-teachers are great if you've got them, to save time checking answers for you. The winners were the top 2 or 3 teams (my classes are 25-30).

Another song idea: "Hot N Cold" By Katy Perry. It's pretty much all antonyms in the chorus. I taught it to my girls earlier this year and they LOVED it, so I will probably also be bringing this up again in the follow up lesson. For low level classes, maybe this would be an easier substitute for the Taylor Swift Song.

can anybody post the powerpoint for older versions?

This lesson is brilliant :) thank you so much, will definately be trying that real soon.

its good to hear one of my favourite song!
i should use this lesson plan soon~

I loved teaching this lesson. Thanks for uploading.  My bright student really felt this song.

I LOVE T. Swift!
I wanna make my students listen to her songs, and they'll love her!

Haha, okay I figured it out.

This lesson was taught to a group of fairly low-level highschool first grade girls in a wintercamp. It can definitely also work for middleschoolers.

It includes enough handouts and activities to last 3 days.  Most of my girls loved it, some of them were getting a bit bored with it by day 3. You could handpick the best handouts for your students and shorten it to 2 days or you could be more imaginative than myself and think of a more fun way to finish off the lesson.

Some of the handouts are graded in order to cater for different levels of students in the same classroom.

If you use this lesson, please let me know how it goes and how you think it can be improved.

Attached:  Powerpoint slides (warmer, vocab introduction, first listening activity)