This is a speaking focused advanced high school ESL lesson plan with the theme renewable energy. It worked really well at my science focused high school and as it is quite an interesting topic I'm sure it would work well in any advanced class. If you use this lesson I would love to know how it goes, so please leave a comment!
Students will be able to discuss the pros and cons of renewable energy sources.
They will learn vocabulary associated with the renewable energy theme.
Mini whiteboards or paper.
Ask the students questions about the pictures on the first slide, then introduce the vocab and make sure the students understand it. (5 minutes)
Show the next slide. Give the students five or ten minutes to think of as many things as they can about those renewable energy sources. My school is a specialty science school so the answers were really in depth but the activity would still work if the answers were simpler. Ask each group to read out their answers. (10 minutes)
Show the next few slides with the examples of innovative uses of renewable energy. First show the picture and ask the students to guess what each picture is, and then show them the slide which explains what the picture is. Put the students in 4 groups and tell them they will then have to think of a way that their school could use renewable energy. Tell them they can use any of the methods we have looked at in class. Lots of my students came up with very creative/far fetched ideas which I encouraged, but the activity would work equally well with serious ideas. (20 minutes)
Each group should then present their ideas to the class. While they do this all the other groups should think of a plus point, a negative point and an interesting point about each idea. They should then share this with the class when the group has finished presenting. (15 minutes)