This one-hour lesson will provide your intermediate and high elementary students with a great opportunity to speak, practice comparative grammar, and practice speaking about education.

You can download the images and discussion questions here.

1. Project these two pictures on the board or print them and pass them out.

2. In groups of two or three, write as many differences about the two pictures as you can. Students don’t have to write complete sentences. (5 min)

3. Have each group tell the class some of the differences that they noticed. Write a few of the differences on the board. Write these differences in complete sentences. (5 min)

4. Ask students to look at the sentences and decide what words/grammar they used for comparing the photos. Underline words/grammar such as “more, nowadays, was/is, both, etc.” If you feel the students need more help, you can elicit/add more sentence examples. (5-10 min)

5. Remove the pictures. Have students make a venn diagram on their papers. Students should think about their country/ies. On one side of the venn diagram write past and on the other write present. Write all the differences they can think of between schools of the past and present. In the middle they should write things that are the same. This can be done in pairs or small groups. (10 min)

6. Put a big venn diagram on the board. Tell every student in the class that they must write something on the board, and they can’t write something that has already been written. This will be chaotic and probably some students will write the same as others. It doesn’t really matter. This is just to get everyone out of their seat and thinking about the topic. (5-10 min)

7. Grab a ball, scrunched up paper, or stuffed animal. Throw it at a student. Have them tell you one difference or similarity from the board using a complete sentence. Listen out for grammar mistakes and gently correct. Have that student toss the “ball” to another student who says a sentence based on what is written on the board, then pass to another student. Not everyone needs to speak (that would be boring). This is just to check that students aren’t making any major grammar/vocab mistakes. (5 min)

8. Now put students into partners. Have them answer the discussion questions below. Tell them to listen for any interesting differences/similarities their partners notice because you’ll be talking about those as a class in a few minutes. The teacher should walk around, listen, and gently correct grammar/vocab as needed. (Words that are underlined may need to be pre-taught to students.) (10-15 min)

9. Ask a few students to tell you interesting differences/similarities their partners noticed. (5-min)

10. If you noticed any repeat grammar/vocabulary errors, put those on the board now and quickly review those problems as a class. (5 min)

If you want to check out a shorter intermediate lesson, try this 30 minute intermediate conversation lesson about language learning.