My Valentine - A fun lesson for Valentine's day

My Valentine - A fun lesson for Valentine's day

I discovered the song 'My Valentine' by Paul McCartney this week and thought it would be perfect for a Valentine's day lesson.  The song is so romantic ♥  My lesson ended up being rather funny and very lively, I hope your students will enjoy it as much as mine did :-)  


Level: 
Intermediate

Lesson activities: 
Talking about Valentine's day, using sign language to learn vocabulary, listening practice and fill the blanks exercise.


Warm up questions: 

1. What do you know about Valentine's day?
2. Which shape symbolises Valentine's day?
3. What are common gifts that people give on Valentine's day?
4. Does your country celebrate Valentine's day?
5. What does 'My Valentine' mean?
6. What's the most romantic song that you know?
7. What is sign language? 
8. How do you think you sign the word Valentine in sign language?

My Valentine - Paul McCartney

Task 1

Tell students that you are going to show them a You Tube video of a song by Paul McCartney called 'My Valentine'.  Tell them that you will play the first 0.48 seconds without sound.  They need to try to understand the words of the song from the sign language. Ask them to share their ideas (I guarantee it will be funny), play the first 0.48 seconds again without sound and see if they can write down words/expressions/sentences, again spend time listening to their creative ideas.  

Task 2

Show the students the lyrics of the first verse of the song and play the first 0.48 seconds again with sound.  Compare the real words with their ideas, 10 points for each word they guessed correctly:

What if it rained?
We didn't care
She said that someday soon
the sun was gonna shine.
And she was right,
this love of mine,
My Valentine

Task 3 (for groups)

Write down the following words on pieces of paper and hand out a word to each student. Then play the rest of the video, get each student to remember what the 'sign' is for their word. Afterwards, get the students to act out their word in sign language:

Care
Love
Remembering
Appeared
Sign
Nights
Fly
There
Shine
Someday
Right
Rained
Fine
Valentine
Mine
Life
Myself
Certain
Days



Task 4

Hand out the 'fill the gaps' exercise, play the song again from the beginning and get the students to complete the missing words. (For stronger students, you could ask them to try to guess the lyrics first, for weaker students write the list of words from Task 2 (which are the missing words)on the board.

lyrics: http://www.lyricsreg.com/lyrics/paul+mccartney/My+Valentine/

Task 5 - Discussion

Discuss what the general meaning of the song is.  How it made them feel.  Ask if they think that it is romantic? Ask why they think they used sign language in the video? What synonym can they think of for 'valentine'? etc.

lyrics: http://www.lyricsreg.com/lyrics/paul+mccartney/My+Valentine/

Task 6

Quick quiz - Look at the lyrics and:

1. Find a sentence with the past tense.
2. Find a sentence with the future tense with going to.
3. Find a sentence with the future simple tense.
4. Find a sentence with the present tense.
5. Find a phrasal verb.
6. Find 2 words that rhyme with shine.
    etc.