Agony Aunt letters - a writing lesson plan

Dorota Ślęzak - “Agony Aunt Letters” lesson plan
General class description:


LEVEL B1

TEXTBOOK Access 3
UNIT 6c
TOPIC Agony Aunt letters

Class Aims
General class aims
Students:
• Practise expressions giving advice
• Practise expressions asking for advice
• Write a letter to Agony Aunt and her reply
Method:
• Communicative

Techniques:
• Brainstorming & elicitation
• Information exchange
• Writing – a letter based on a model

Work forms and interaction types:
• Individual work monitored by the teacher
• Pairwork (closed and open pairs) – creating a letter to Agony Aunt and her reply
• Lockstep and groupwork – information exchange, writing outcome presentation

Aids and materials used in class:
• Blackboard
• Notebooks
• Writing tools
• Activities prepared by the teacher

Class Description

1) Warm-up (2 minutes):
The teacher elicits expressions asking for and giving advice from the students and writes them on the blackboard (lockstep).


2) Pairwork

Pre-pairwork activity (10 minutes):
The teacher distributes earlier prepared activities written on scraps of paper. Students are asked to read some beginnings of letters written to Agony Aunt and to identify/figure out the problem described.

Dear Agony Aunt,
Recently I’ve been using the Internet a lot, mainly visiting chat rooms. My parents think I only use it for a short time in the evening and to help me with my homework but...

Dear Agony Aunt,
Yesterday, I saw my best friend’s girlfriend/boyfriend in a cafe with another girl/boy...

Dear Agony Aunt,
When I was on holiday last month I met someone really nice. The trouble is that I’ve already got a boyfriend/girlfriend...

Dear Agony Aunt,
I really would like to go travelling around the world for a year but...

Pairwork – closed pairs (20 minutes):
Students are asked to work in pairs and to create a letter to Agony Aunt based on the beginnings of the letters they got from the teacher. Then they try to find solutions to the problems described and write Agony Aunt’s reply. They write the letters in their notebooks.

Pairwork – open pairs (13 minutes)
Chosen students in pairs read aloud their letters to Agony Aunt and replies to the whole class.

Homework
Students are asked to type and print the outcome of their classroom writing in order to create a “problem board” in their English classroom.