Getting to Know Each Other

This is a fun and conversational A2 ESL lesson designed to help students get to know each other and their teacher. It’s perfect as a first lesson to break the ice and create a friendly classroom atmosphere. The lesson includes a variety of engaging activities such as picture descriptions, question-making tasks, listening practice, writing a short self-introduction, and interactive games. Students will work on all major skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—while also learning useful vocabulary and phrases. They’ll get plenty of practice asking and answering questions, with a focus on basic grammar structures. It’s a fun, interactive class that sets the tone for a positive and communicative learning environment.

Lead-in

This pre-intermediate ESL lesson on getting to know each other begins with a picture description activity. On the first slide, students will see three different images and use guided questions to describe them—for example: “What do you see in the picture?”, “Who do you think the people are?”, and “What’s the mood of the conversation?” This engaging activity encourages observation, creativity, and speaking practice, helping students warm up and start communicating naturally right from the start.

Discussion, Useful phrases

Next, there is a discussion activity where students imagine they’re meeting someone for the first time. They’ll think about what questions they’d like to ask and choose five topics from the slide—such as jobs, school, pets, sports, or music—to write a question for each. After that, students will practice useful phrases shown on the next slide by matching questions with appropriate answers. These phrases will also appear in the upcoming listening task, making this a great pre-listening activity to help students become familiar with the language beforehand.

Listening, Writing

The listening activity features four short profiles of people from different countries. Each profile includes basic personal information along with fun facts. Students will listen to each profile and answer the questions provided. They can listen as many times as needed to catch key details, and if they come across unfamiliar words, they’re encouraged to discuss them with the teacher. After completing the listening task, students will move on to a writing activity where they’ll write their own short profile, using the guiding questions as a model.

Speed questions, Unscramble the sentences

After that, students will take part in more conversational activities, including a speed question round where they’ll have one minute to answer each question, giving full responses without overthinking. There’s also an “unscramble the sentences” activity, where students will receive seven jumbled sentences and work to put the words in the correct order. These tasks help reinforce sentence structure and boost speaking fluency.

Two lies, one truth

The lesson ends with a fun and flexible game that can be played several times: Two Lies, One Truth. In this activity, each student shares three statements about themselves—two are lies, and one is true. The rest of the class has to guess which statement is the truth. It’s a great way to practice speaking, build confidence, and learn fun facts about classmates.