High School ESL Lesson Plan - Art!

This is an advanced conversation focused double lesson that can easily be adapted to suit a low level ESL class. All you need to do is change the words in the first activity to suit your classes level. The final activity is also quite hard so you could either change this for something else or simply make it a one off lesson.

Lesson aim.
To improve conversation skills. Could also be adapted to be focused on learning emotions.

Time.
50 minutes x 2

What you need.
Art! presentation. (This presentation includes 11 slides that just have famous paintings on them. This is only included so that it is easy to print off and give to the students as a handout. Once you have done this you should delete the slides)

Word Grid Game Worksheet. 

Printout of top 10 most expensive paintings.

What to do.
Activity one. (Lesson 1)
Word grid game. First show the grid on the presentation and make sure the students understand all the words. Then put the students in pairs with one student being O and one student being X. The students then have to make sentences using one or more of the words in the grid. When they make a sentence they should mark off all the words that they use. The first student in each pair to use all the words wins. (15 minutes)

Activity two.
Hand the printout of the 10 most expensive paintings to each group. Ask each group to think about which one they think is the most expensive one and to say why. Ask each group to tell the class which one they chose. Show the answers by following this link. I also tell them the story about the painting La Reve by Pablo Picasso. This painting was going to be sold for $139million dollars but the sale was cancelled when the owner put his elbow through the canvas! (7 minutes)

Activity three.
Ask the students to choose three paintings and answer the questions on the Powerpoint. One of my schools also has computers in the classroom that the students can use so I ask them to find one interesting fact about the painting using English language websites. (30 minutes)

Activity four (Lesson 2).
Continuing from the previous lesson give the students 5 minutes to finalize the answers to the questions from the previous lesson. Then each group should read out the answers to each question. I also make this activity into a game by asking the other teams to guess which painting the group is talking about. (15  minutes)

Activity 5. 
In this activity the students will have to come up with arguments either for or against the statements in the presentation. First show the students the statement and ask them to read the information on the Powerpoint. Then give each group 5 minutes to come up with a reason for their stance and also a reason for why they think the opposite stance is incorrect. Each group then has to present their reasons to the class. (35 minutes)