Habits and routines

Present simple negative and questions

Free

60-90 min

Standard

Beginner

Overview

This lesson helps students talk about their daily routines and habits using the Present Simple. By using the "Early Bird or Night Owl" theme, students learn to describe their day and use negative forms in a natural way. The goal is to get students comfortable asking and answering basic questions about their lifestyle while building the vocabulary they need to talk about their morning and evening activities.

The presentation material is a fun diagnostic quiz which leads into vocabulary and grammar practice. After that, the students work together in pairs to review images and then practice reporting their partner's habits to the class. The session ends with an open discussion about their opinions on routines, followed by a podcast listening task for homework to consolidate what they’ve learned.

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Media & Worksheets

Lesson PDFs

e-lesson Version

Our standard lessons follow a consistent six-stage flow: warm-up, a presentation based on real content (video, text or images), a contextual language focus stage, controlled practice, a free practice session, and a final homework task.

Each lesson includes a printable student worksheet and teacher’s guide with answer keys. For digital classrooms, we provide an editable Google Slides e-lesson, that is also compatible with PowerPoint.

The purpose of this stage is to activate your students' existing knowledge and prepare them for the lesson's theme.

Activity 1: Students have to categorise common daily activities into morning and night routines based on their own habits before sharing them with the class.

During this part of the lesson, we will introduce the main content, presenting new language and concepts through video, text or images.

Activity 2: The students will look at the quiz title and images of a bird and an owl to predict the topic of the reading text.

Activity 3: Students read a magazine-style quiz about morning and night routines and select their answers to determine their personality type.

Activity 4: Your students will compare their results from the quiz and discuss whether they agree with the description of their personality type.

This stage of of the lesson includes a contextual, interactive activity designed for presenting the target language.

Activity 5: The students have to look at example sentences from the quiz to identify the patterns and rules for using do and don't in the Present Simple.

To reinforce their understanding of the new language or concepts introduced in the lesson, the students will work on a couple of controlled practice activities.

Activity 6: Students complete a short text about a character's routine by filling in the missing verbs and grammar structures.

Activity 7: The students reorder words to create correct negative sentences and questions about daily habits and routines.

Activity 8: Students use image prompts of various activities to interview each other about their habits and find things they have in common.

We move into free practice for this stage, where the students apply the language in more open-ended, communicative activities.

Activity 9: The students will use the information gathered in the previous interview to tell the rest of the class about their partner's habits.

Activity 10: Now the students work in small groups to share opinions on daily routines and habits, moving away from factual reporting to open-ended conversation.

Finally, we'll encourage students to extend their learning outside of the classroom to reinforce the language and concepts covered during the lesson.

Homework task: Students listen to an episode of the Real Easy English podcast to practice identifying specific details about daily habits and modern vocabulary in a natural conversation.