Phrasal verbs: The school play

Objective & content

Everything to teach 12 phrasal verbs whose meaning you can't guess from the words, 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: on a rainy Sunday, Zara is tidying the attic when she comes across an old photo of her mum at fifteen, dressed as a tree in a school play. Mum laughs and tells her the story: "I wanted the main part, but I ended up as a tree!" On the night she showed off with a little dance and fell off the stage, and it turned out to be the funniest moment of the play. Next week Zara is a rock in her own school play: "Now I know who I take after!" Pupils meet the verbs in the story before they meet the rule. The pack teaches come across, end up, get over, show off, turn out, take after, bring up, let down, put up with, look up to, fall out and come up with; the formal one-word verb for each, for an essay or a formal letter (come across → discover, let down → disappoint, put up with → tolerate); where it, her or them goes (let me down, but put up with it and look up to her); and end up + -ing and turn out to be. By the end, pupils can use the 12 verbs when they talk, and swap them for a formal word when they write.

Pedagogical guide

The meanings and rules are 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. Page 1 is about what the verbs mean, page 2 about everyday and formal words (its Gold task rewrites sentences for an essay), and page 3 about where it goes, end up and turn out; its Gold task has pupils write about their own life. The team game uses funny drawings: a boy doing a wheelie in front of his friends, a girl and her dad asleep in exactly the same position, a boy who finds a fossil on the beach, a girl trying to do her homework while her little brother plays the trumpet, a family stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the beach. In the first round, teams finish each sentence with the right verb; in the third round, they write the verb and say the formal word. Every round opens with a worked example. The quiz gives a mark out of 20. The key page of the practice sheet holds the answers, teacher notes and common mistakes (for example "Don't let down me!", "We ended up to walk home" and "I can't put up it with"). 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 four pictures and ask "Why did Mum end up as a tree?", then read the story together. Read the two slides of meanings; pupils find the six verbs of the story. Read the "Everyday or formal?" box (say a phrasal verb, pupils say the formal word) and the "Where does it go?" box. 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. (25 min) Play it (game.pdf, lesson 2): make teams and read each round's example together. Show each question, give 20 seconds to write the answer (40 seconds in round 3), 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 two slides of meanings on screen during the practice and the game. Give them a card with the 12 verbs and their meanings, and do the quiz in two halves.

[A] Send fast pupils straight to Gold and then to a short paragraph of their own about a day that turned out differently from their plan, with at least six of the verbs, then the same paragraph rewritten for a formal report.

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 everyday phrasal verbs (get up, look for, give up) and where it goes with them (pick it up).