Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, K-3

In the BrainPOP ELL movie, I Didn’t Sleep (L1U6L3), Ben tells Moby about his terrible week that began with a sleepless Sunday night. In this lesson plan, adaptable for grades K-8, students sequence sentence strips from the movie, match cause and effect phrases, and practice the negative form of the past simple.

Lesson Plan Common Core State Standards Alignments

Students will:

  1. Identify and correct mistakes in a sequence of events using the negative form of the past simple.
  2. Match cause and effect phrases from the movie.
  3. Write a short passage about activities they did.

Materials:

Vocabulary:

did/didn’t, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Preparation:

Prepare the following sets of word cards and sentence strips for each pair of students

1. For Activity 1 (No, He Didn't), you will need the following sets of sentence strips for each pair of students. Prepare sentence strips describing Ben’s activities. Begin sentences with lowercase letters, and end with a period. For example: he didn’t sleep. / he slept in class. / he didn’t hear about the homework or the quiz. / the teacher gave him lots of homework for Wednesday. / he didn’t remember anything for the quiz. / he wanted to study. / he went to a movie with Moby.
You will also need strips or cards for the days of the week. Begin each day with the preposition “on” and include the comma. For example: On Sunday, / On Monday, / On Tuesday, etc.

2. For Activity 2 (Ben's Terrible Week), prepare sentence strips with the “cause” phrases from the movie. Add a comma at the end of each phrase. For example: Because Ben watched a movie on Sunday, / Because Ben didn’t sleep at night, / Because Ben was asleep in class, / Because Ben didn’t do the homework for Tuesday, / Because Ben didn’t study, / Because Ben failed his quiz on Friday, / Because there’s no school on Sunday,

3. Cause Cards: Prepare cards with the “cause” phrases from the movie, with a comma at the end of each phrase. For example: Because Ben watched a movie on Sunday, / Because Ben didn’t sleep at night, / Because Ben was asleep in class, / Because Ben didn’t do the homework for Tuesday, / Because Ben didn’t study, / Because Ben failed his quiz on Friday, / Because there’s no school on Sunday,

Lesson Procedure:

  1. No, He Didn’t. After watching the movie, I Didn’t Sleep (L1U6L3), have pairs of students lay out the sentence strips, matching Ben’s activities to the days of the week, but in a jumbled order. Partners take turns correcting the information, using sentences in negative past simple. For example: He didn’t sleep in class on Tuesday. He slept in class on Monday.
  2. Ben’s Terrible Week. Extend the sentence strips activity to incorporate the concept of cause and effect. This time, students match Ben’s activities with the events that caused them (the “cause” phrases from the Preparation section). They may have to watch the movie again, to confirm their answers.
  3. What I Did Last Week. Have students write their own short passage about activities they did each day last week. They should include at least one activity per day, and incorporate at least three negative past simple sentences. They may want to use the cause and effect model from the previous activity. For example: I didn’t go to the party because I was busy. Ask several volunteers to read their passages to the class. Then have pairs of students select one of those passages. The partners reconstruct the selected story from memory, and write down the sequence of events they remember. To check their work, students read their versions to the original writers. Remind all students to use the past simple negative form of verbs.

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