Phrasal verbs: Pick it up!

Objective & content

Everything to teach phrasal verbs with it and them 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: Ella finds a purple purse in a clothes shop, fills in a form and gets it back to its owner, who comes to the house with flowers. Pupils meet the verbs in the story before they meet the rule. The pack teaches 12 new everyday phrasal verbs (pick up, put away, throw away, try on, fill in, write down, turn up, turn down, give back, wake up, go out and come in) and where the pronoun goes: with a noun, both orders are right (pick up the bag, pick the bag up); with it or them, the small word goes at the end (pick it up, not pick up it). It also shows that some phrasal verbs never split (look after it, look for them). By the end, pupils can use these verbs with it, them, him and her, in the present, the past and the present perfect (I've just thrown it away).

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 second of three phrasal verbs packs: it follows Phrasal verbs (A2: get up, look for, put on), whose verbs come back here as the ones that never split, and comes before Don't give up! (B1: give up, set off, run out of). The key page of the practice sheet holds the answers, teacher notes and seven common mistakes (for example "Pick up it", "Look it after" and "Can I try this jacket?"). 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 "What did Ella find? Who came to the house?", then read it together. Read the Remember! boxes aloud; pupils find picked it up, Turn it down and giving it back in the story. Say a verb with a noun ("Pick up your pen!"): pupils do it and answer "Pick it up!". 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 act each command (Pick it up! Put it away!) 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 tidying their room and read it to a partner, who counts the phrasal verbs with it or them. 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 (the A2 pack Phrasal verbs), the object pronouns it, them, him and her, the past simple and the present perfect with just.