Rooms In A House – A Complete ESL Lesson Plan
Teaching students vocabulary about the house and the rooms in a house will enable them to talk about where they live. This lesson plan includes activities and games to teach rooms of the house vocabulary. This lesson will also focus on the key expression ‘Where is (mom)?’ – ‘She’s in the (living room).’, but it can be easily adapted to use other expressions about the home.
The activities in this lesson plan are mainly aimed at young ESL students. These activities can, however, be adapted to teach older beginner learners. Download all the materials you need for this lesson below. And see the bottom of the page for additional games and activities to teach rooms of the house to English language learners.
Materials for this lesson:
Rooms Of The House Lesson Plan for Beginner ESL Students
Introduction and Warm Up
A great way to start any ESL class with kids is with a fun song. A good ESL song will grab students’ attention and help them to learn the keywords. There are many ‘rooms of the house’ songs on YouTube, but our favorite is ‘The House Song‘ by Busy Beavers. This song is great for teaching rooms of the house as it includes the words bedroom, bathroom, living room, dining room, and kitchen, and the key sentences ‘Where’s …? – He’s in the (bathroom).’
To start the class, play the song and ask students to try and guess what they will study today. Next, draw a simple house diagram on the board with 5 rooms and try to elicit the rooms of the house words from the students. Then, using the diagram, practice singing the chorus to the song (bedroom, bathroom, living room, dining room, kitchen). After practicing singing the chorus a few times, try singing along to the whole song with the music.
To make this song more fun, give each student a room picture card and ask them to stand up when they hear their room in the song. Make it even more fun by speeding up the song on YouTube and see if your students can keep up!
Practice Key Words And Sentences
Using these rooms of the house flashcards, practice the keywords by showing the flashcards and asking students to repeat after you. Then, ask students to try to say the rooms on their own. Once students have practiced enough, its time for a fun flashcard game to practice the key expressions.
Activity 1: Where’s Dad? – Whole Class Activity
Place all the flashcards on the board. On a small piece of paper, draw a simple stick man, and tell students that it is ‘dad’. Then on another piece of paper, draw a woman and ask students to guess who it is (mom). Next, ask students if dad is a man or a woman. Do the same with mom and tell students that in English, we use ‘he’ to refer to a man and ‘she’ to refer to a woman. Drill the key expression by placing the picture of dad in the middle of the ‘bedroom’ flashcard and saying, ‘He is in the bedroom.’
Then, place the picture in the bathroom and say, ‘He is in bathroom.’ Ask students to repeat after you. Do the same using the picture of mom and saying ‘She is in the living room / kitchen‘, etc. Once students have practiced enough, tell them to all close their eyes. Then, place the picture of dad behind one of the flashcards. Next, tell students to open their eyes and ask them, ‘Where is dad?‘. The students should try to guess where the picture of dad is using the sentence ‘He’s in the (bedroom)‘.
Each time a student guesses, take that flashcard off the board to see if they guessed correctly. When a student guesses correctly, invite that student up to the front. Tell the other students to close their eyes again, and the student at the front can then place the mom picture card behind one of the room flashcards. Then that student can ask the class, ‘Where’s mom?’ and the other students will again try to guess using ‘She’s in the (kitchen).‘
Activity 2: Where’s Dad? – Group Activity
This game uses the same concept and expressions from the previous activity. But this time in small groups. It is designed to get students talking to each other using the rooms of the house vocabulary. Ask students to make small groups of 3/4 and give each group this set of 8 ‘rooms of the house’ mini-flashcards (print and cut them out before the lesson).
Ask each group to also draw one mom and one dad picture on a small piece of paper (must be smaller than the mini flashcards). Once all groups have a set of cards and a mom/dad picture, the game can begin.
One student from the group must look away / close their eyes. Then the other students in the group will place the mom or dad picture under one of the cards. When the student opens his/her eyes, the other students will ask ‘Where is mom/dad?’, and the student must try to guess while using the key expression (He / She’s in the bedroom.). If the student guesses correctly, then he/she gets to keep that card. Then it’s the next student’s turn. The game ends when all the cards are gone. The student in the group with the most cards is the winner.
Activity 3: Rooms of The House Telepathy Game
For this final activity, print these answer sheets and give one to each student or pair of students. In this ‘Telepathy Game’ students will see two possible answers. They must choose ONE and write it down. To find out the answer, the students must use ‘Telepathy’ to read the teacher’s mind.
Obviously, students can not really read minds, but kids love pretending they have this superpower. To make this game more fun, play along and pretend you are sending them the answers with the power of your mind.
If your students are not ready to write down the answers for this game, they can simply raise their hands or move to one side of the room to indicate their answers. This style game is so simple, but a lot of fun, and your students will be cheering with joy when they guess correctly.
