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Expressing ability and possibility

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Low-resource ESL lesson plan
Intermediate/B1
Low-resource ESL lesson plan
Grammar
Low-resource ESL lesson plan
45-60 min
Low-resource ESL lesson plan
Low-Resource
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Overview

This intermediate-level lesson explores the various modal verbs used to express ability and possibility, such as can, could, may, and might. Through this lesson, students will learn how to use these modals to talk about things they are capable of doing and situations that are possible or likely. 

The lesson plan begins with a boardwork suggestion that can be used to introduce these modal verbs. After that, students will participate in a few low-resource classroom activities focusing on collaborative writing and speaking tasks. We end the session with a fun classroom game idea where students have to talk about hypothetical scenarios for as long as possible.

Lesson Outline
Activities
Low-resource ESL lesson plan
Boardwork
1A possible future
2What happened?
3Discuss and debate
Games
1Stopwatch challenge
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Classroom activities

Low-resource ESL lesson plan

Use of the board

The students will look at different modal verbs for expressing ability and possibility.

The board work below presents the modal verbs for expressing ability and possibility. Students at this level will be familiar with using 'can' to express ability, but probably not 'is able'. The colour-coded text should give you an idea of what information you can attempt to elicit as you step through each of the functional uses.

Low-resource ESL lesson plan
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Low-resource ESL activity

A possible future

Students will write a few statements about what they might be doing at different points in the future.

Low-resource ESL lesson plan
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Low-resource ESL activity

What happened?

The students will work in groups to speculate on what might have happened for different scenarios.

Low-resource ESL lesson plan
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Low-resource ESL activity

Discuss and debate

Working in groups, the students will debate a series of statements.

Low-resource ESL lesson plan
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Classroom games

Low-resource ESL activity

Stopwatch challenge: Possible futures

Students are given a topic about the future and have to talk for as long as possible using the modal verbs they have learned in this lesson.

Low-resource ESL lesson plan
This lesson plan is exclusive to TEFLHandbook members. Join today and get instant access to our expanding library of teaching resources.