Lesson Topics: lotteries, greed, money
Skill Focus: Speaking, Reading, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 1.5 hours
Lesson Plan Download: waitress-lottery-upper-intermediate-lesson-122023.docx
Lesson Overview:
- As warm-up activities, students answer four discussion questions and then try to predict what happens in the passage's story based on a word cloud.
- The reading passage is 355 words. It tells the story of Tonda Dickerson, a waitress who won the lottery in 1999 and then faced several hardships including legal battles and a kidnapping. The story is written in a fairly simple manner and should be accessible to B2 students.
- After a memory recall activity, students complete comprehension questions. This is followed by a vocabulary-matching exercise and an activity where students make questions using the target vocabulary.
- The first speaking activity is a debate on whether lotteries should be legal.
- The lesson includes two roleplays; the first is set in a court, and pits two lawyers against each other. One lawyer represents a lottery winner, and the other lawyer represents a group of restaurant staff who believe they are owed part of the prize.
- Next, students roleplay an interview between a lottery winner and a reporter. This is followed by an activity in which students must choose how to spend their prize money based on a number of options that vary in seriousness.
- The lesson ends with a few famous quotations related to language learning, a final vocabulary review, final discussion questions, and a review of collocations.
UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2/C1) EFL Lesson Plan on Winning the Lottery
Warm-up Questions
1) Do you have enough money for the things you need in life?
2) How much money is needed to be happy?
3) Have you ever won anything?
4) Do you know anyone who has won the lottery?
Predicting: Based on the word cloud below, can you predict what happens in the story from today’s lesson?
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-- Lesson plan on winning the lottery written by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). ChatGPT was used to suggest expressions for speaking activities and generate answer keys. Site members may photocopy and edit the file for their classes. Permission is not given to rebrand the lesson, redistribute it on another platform, or sell it as part of commercial course curriculum. For questions, contact the author.
Possible answers to follow-up questions:
- (Possible answer: It suggests that humans are greedy. The story demonstrates how human affairs can quickly turn to legal or criminal action when money is involved.)
- Tonda received the lottery ticket as a tip from a regular customer named Edward Seward at the restaurant where she worked as a waitress.
- Her coworkers took her to court because they claimed that Tonda had promised to split the lottery winnings with them if she won, based on an agreement known as a pool.
- A couple who was in the restaurant said that Tonda had mentioned that she was going to split the winnings with her coworkers.
- …
Vocabulary Answers: 1-b, 2-h, 3-a, 4-e, 5-I, 6-d, 7-c, 8-g, 9-f
Vocabulary Review Answers: See original passage
Collocation Answers: 1-c, 2-b, 3-g, 4-f, 5-a, 6-e, 7-d