Lesson Share: Children: Let's buy a robot!

Robots have always been a source of inspiration and they have been used to teach orders and express abilities and non-abilities many times. Here we have an integrated activity.

Procedure

1. Ask students to pretend to be robots. Tell them that they will have to imagine they are standing inside the window area of a shop.
2. Choose one student to play the role of shop assistant and another one to play the role of customer.
3. Tell each of them what they are supposed to do.
4. For example: The customer wants to buy a robot that can do different things at home such as: clean the house, open the window, close the door, sing, dance, play the guitar, sweep, cook, make the beds, iron, answer the phone, etc.
5. The shop assistant will call each robot and give them instructions.
6. Each robot will have to greet the customer, introduce himself, spell his name, talk about his age, place of origin and when he is given an instruction he will have to perform the activity and say what he can or can't do.
   
   Sample dialogue

Shop assistant: Good morning, Can I help you?

Customer: Yes, please. I'd like to buy a robot.

Shop assistant: OK. Robot 1. Come here, please. Talk!

Robot: Hello, My name is Roberto. R-o-b-e-r-t-o. I'm six years old. I'm from Argentina.

Customer: Can he sweep?

Shop assistant: Roberto: sweep, please.

Robot: I can sweep. I can sweep very well.

Shop assistant: Can he cook?

Shop assistant: Roberto: Please, cook, cook quickly.

Robot: I can cook quickly. (Encourage kids to speak like robots. They love doing that and they it enjoy it a lot!).

7. Then, the activity goes on with the rest of the robots. Finally, the customer chooses one robot and buys it. So they will be practising different functions such as: How much is it? Here you are, thank you, You are welcome.

8. For homework you can ask students to draw a robot and all the activities he can or can't do. In the following class they will be talking about their robots. In this way, they will be working on third person singular but consolidating the same vocabulary and structures they had already worked on their previous class.

9. This activity can be adapted in order to recycle:

1. Likes and dislikes, imperatives (orders)

The shop assistant giving an order and the robot expressing likes and dislikes:

Shop assistant: Clean the house, please.

Robot: I don't like cleaning houses. I like sleeping.

   2. Present continuous (actions now)

The owner of the robot is checking what the robot is doing. For example:

Owner: Where are you? Are you cleaning the windows?

Robot: No, I'm not. I'm cleaning the doors.

In this case you could give both the owner and the robot flashcards showing the activity.