A Special Day
This A2 lesson teaches birthday vocabulary through a sweet audio story about a dog’s birthday party. Students learn words like “to throw a party,” “presents,” “excited,” and “puppy” while talking about celebrations and special days. The activities include listening comprehension, sentence building, and photo descriptions of different birthday scenes.
Lesson overview
- Learn 9 birthday and celebration words through audio and images
- Listen to a story about Teddy the Pomeranian’s birthday party
- Practice sentence structure with word rearrangement exercises
- Describe birthday photos and talk about your own special days
Student's Version (Light/Dark)
Teacher's Version (Answer Keys)
Printable Classroom Version (A4)
| Level | Vocabulary | Audio Length | Lesson Time |
| A2 / Pre-Intermediate | 9 words | 1:00 min | 60 min |
Vocabulary
- a birthday party
- a puppy
- balloons
- a cake
- presents
- happy
- excited
- to celebrate
- to throw a party
Contents
- Lead-in
- Vocabulary
- Practice
- Listening
- Questions
- True or false
- Practice
- Speaking
- Describe a photo
Start with the lead-in questions about favorite special days and birthdays. When is your birthday? Do you like going to parties? What presents do you like to get? This activates prior knowledge and shows you what vocabulary students already have. Then move to the picture labeling activity. Students identify eight objects in a birthday scene like balloons, cake, and presents.
The vocabulary matching section pairs words with definitions. What do we call a special day with friends and food? A birthday party. What’s a baby dog called? A puppy. Go through all nine words and check understanding. Make sure to drill “to throw a party” and “to celebrate” since these are common party phrases. The practice exercise has scrambled sentences students rearrange. For example, “a party / We / to throw / are going / for my birthday” becomes “We are going to throw a party for my birthday.”
Now play the audio twice. It’s about 1 minute long and tells the story of Teddy the Pomeranian’s birthday party. First listening, students take notes about what happened. Second listening, they answer specific questions. What kind of dog is Teddy? What did Annabel get for the party? How many puppy friends came? After listening, students do a true or false activity. Is Teddy a Pomeranian? True. Did only three puppy friends come? False, twelve came.
The gap-fill exercise has students complete a summary paragraph using words like “balloons,” “cake,” “excited,” and “to throw a party.” Check answers together and clarify any confusion. Move to the speaking task where students describe a special day they had. Give them sentence frames like “The special day was…”, “We had a…”, “I felt…” This scaffolds their speaking and helps them use lesson vocabulary. After each student shares, classmates ask two follow-up questions.
The photo description section shows three birthday pictures. Students answer questions about each one. What’s in front of the boy? How many candles are on the cake? Who is pushing the cake? What number is on the cake? This practices observation skills and using birthday vocabulary in context. You can do this as whole-class discussion or in pairs where one student describes and the other asks questions.
