A 'daily routine' lesson plan

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Teachers often wonder whether teaching 'daily routine' is worthwhile. It's feels like a tired topic and one that's hard to make interesting or fun. On the other hand, the vocab and verbs relating to it are very useful and fashionably 'high frequency' for the most part. Teachers can be creative in trying to make the topic more amenable to students, for example by doing 'A day in the life of (insert celebrity name)' and on my Y9 and Y10-11 pages I've included video listening tasks based on the 'Portrait d'un enfant' series from Arte. These show children in developing countries (mainly) talking about their typical days (or, usually better because they are clearer, have a voice-off commentary of the child's day). Needless to say, those videos have a superb extra cultural dimension in raising students' awareness of lives beyond their own experience.

However... on balance, I think there is still a place for appealing to students' own experience and their own daily routines. And after all, it is something we often talk about. We do talk about mundane stuff like get-up times, breakfast, evening activities, the weather, favourite foods, healthy living and so on. So you can make a case for teaching daily routine, while attempting to make tasks as enjoyable as possible.

So below is a lesson plan from my 50 Lesson Plans book. The level is A1 and in England would most likely suit a Y8 class. I wouldn't see the lesson in isolation, but as one possible part of a sequence which could include an intensive sentence builder routine, a task-based lesson, such as a class survey,  and, say, a video such as the ones mentioned above. The fun element comes mainly from the use of gesture.

 

Step by step lesson plan

From 50 Lesson Plans for French Teachers (2020)

1. Talk through your typical school day routine and accompany each sentence with a gesture. You can shorten the sequence for some classes if you want to avoid cognitive overload.

a)    Je me réveille à sept heures.

b)    J’écoute la radio.

c)    Je me lève.

d)    Je vais à la salle de bains.

e)    Je prends ma douche.

f)     Je me brosse les dents.

g)    Je retourne à ma chambre.

h)    Je m’habille.

i)      Je descends à la cuisine

j)      Je prends mon petit déjeuner.

k)    Je quitte la maison.

l)      Je vais à l’école en voiture.

m)   Le matin j’ai cours.

n)    Je prends le déjeuner à la cantine.

o)    Je rentre à dix-sept heures.

p)    Je prends le dîner.

q)    Je travaille.

r)     Je regarde la télé.

s)    Je me couche à 23 heures.

 

2. Repeat the sequence twice more, as students copy your gestures and say the sentences.
3. Display the sentences and do choral repetition. Provide a parallel translation if useful.
4. With the sentences still visible, make statements at random as students have to make the right gesture.
5. Now make a gesture yourself and students must respond with the correct sentence. Chorally repeat each response.
6. Pairs can now take turns doing the same task, this time with a gapped version of the statements left on the board. Partner A makes a gesture, partner B gives the sentence.
7. Remove the sentences from the board. In pairs each partner tries to recall as many sentences as they can in the right order.
8. Display English translations of each sentence for students to translate back into French. This could be done orally or in writing.
9. This might be a good time to pick up one or two grammatical issues, e.g. how reflexive verbs work (“I wake myself up”). Also worth highlighting is the use of prendre in “I have my breakfast”.

Note: in subsequent lessons you can recycle the same language through activities such as running dictation, running translation, delayed dictation, gap-fill, “complete the sentence”, odd-one-out and so on. Descriptions of these exercises are easy to find if you haven’t heard of them yet.