Phrasal verbs: Don't give up!

Objective & content

Everything to teach phrasal verbs whose meaning you can't guess, in one pack of four parts: slides to project, a three-level practice sheet, a team game and a 10-minute quiz with answers. The pack starts from a short story: a Year 9 class sets off on a trip to London, the coach breaks down on the motorway and they run out of food, but they find out they are a ten-minute walk from Stonehenge. Pupils meet the verbs in the story before they meet the rule. The pack teaches 12 phrasal verbs whose meaning is not the sum of their words: give up, grow up, make up, find out, set off, break down, look up and pick up; three-word phrasal verbs (run out of, look forward to, get on with), with -ing after look forward to; and verbs with two meanings (take off your coat / the plane took off; pick up a pen / pick up a friend). It also brings back the it / them rule (look it up, give it up) and shows that three-word verbs never split (run out of it). By the end, pupils can understand and use these verbs in the present, the past and the present perfect (We've run out of milk).

Pedagogical guide

The rule is given in Remember! boxes, not left to be deduced; the story and its pictures make the verbs easy to notice first. The practice sheet is one A4 sheet at three levels: every page has a Bronze, a Silver and a Gold task, so the whole class works on the same page and each pupil moves up when they finish. The game puts the same verbs under time pressure, in four rounds, and the quiz gives a mark out of 20. This is the third of three phrasal verbs packs, after Phrasal verbs (A2: get up, look for, put on) and Pick it up! (A2+: where it and them go). It stays at B1 level: idiomatic verbs such as come across, bring up or turn out are left for later. The key page of the practice sheet holds the answers, teacher notes and seven common mistakes (for example "I'm looking forward to go on holiday", "We've run out milk" and "Look up it in the dictionary"). Spelling is British English.

Suggested procedure

The pack fits two lessons of about 45 minutes. Lesson 1 is Teach it and Practise it; lesson 2 is Play it and Check it. The four parts can also be used alone.

1. (25 min) Teach it (lesson.pdf, lesson 1): show the story and ask "Was it a good trip? What did Amira find out?", then read it together. Read the Remember! boxes aloud; pupils find the eight phrasal verbs in the story and say what each one means. Pupils tell a partner one thing they are looking forward to (I'm looking forward to + -ing), then make one sentence for each meaning of take off. Then do the six-question quick check with the class. The last slide is for the teacher and is not projected.
2. (20 min) Practise it (practice.pdf, lesson 1): give each pupil the three pages and a start (Bronze, Silver or Gold); correct page by page, with one pupil from each medal reading an answer.
3. (20 min) Play it (game.pdf, lesson 2): make teams, show each question, give 20 seconds to write the answer, then show the answer slide and keep the score. Round 4 is worth double points.
4. (10 min) Check it (quiz.pdf, lesson 2): pupils work alone on page 1; mark out of 20 with page 2.

Adaptations

[S] Start every pupil at Bronze and keep the Remember! slides on screen during the practice and the game. Give them the meanings of the 12 verbs on a card, and do the quiz in two halves.

[A] Send fast pupils straight to Gold and then to the Gold writing task on page 3, where they write about a trip or a day that went wrong with at least five phrasal verbs, and read it to a partner, who says what each verb means. In the game, ask them to say each answer aloud in a full sentence.

Materials & prerequisites

A projector or screen for lesson.pdf and game.pdf (one PDF page per slide, turned with the arrow keys), and paper for the teams' answers. Print practice.pdf (3 pages for pupils; the key page is for the teacher) and quiz.pdf (page 1 for pupils, page 2 is the key), one copy per pupil. Pupils should already know what a phrasal verb is and where it and them go (the A2 and A2+ packs), the past simple of common irregular verbs, and the present perfect.