Phrasal verbs

Objective & content

Everything to teach everyday phrasal verbs 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 terrible Monday morning in which Sam wakes up late, rushes to school and finds the gate closed, because it is a holiday. Pupils meet the verbs in the story before they meet the rule. The pack teaches what a phrasal verb is (a verb + a small word = a new meaning) through 12 verbs: wake up, get up, put on, take off, turn on, turn off, look at, look for, look after, get on, get off and come back. It groups them in families (look at / look for / look after, get up / get on / get off), shows the on / off opposites (put on and take off, turn on and turn off, get on and get off), and shows that only the verb changes: she gets up, he got up. By the end, pupils can use these 12 phrasal verbs in sentences in the present and the past.

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. The pack stays at A2 level and uses only tenses pupils know (present simple, past simple, imperatives). Two points are left out on purpose for a later stage: where the pronoun goes (turn it off) and idiomatic meanings (give up, find out). The key page of the practice sheet holds the answers, teacher notes and seven common mistakes (for example "I'm looking my phone", "Put off your shoes" and "She get ups at seven"). 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 "Is it a good morning for Sam?", read it together and ask why the school gate is closed. Read the Remember! boxes aloud; pupils find the phrasal verbs in the story. For the families and opposites, play a mime game: a pupil mimes put on, take off or look for, and the class says the verb. 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. Let pupils mime each verb as they say it, 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 yesterday morning and read it to a partner, who counts the phrasal verbs. 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 the present simple and the past simple of common irregular verbs (got, woke, took, came, put), and everyday words for clothes and transport.