Idioms: sleep

This lesson focuses on understanding, recognising, and confidently using common English idioms related to sleep, rest and daily routines. Learners explore how English speakers describe sleeping habits, tiredness, early mornings and late nights idiomatic expressions used in everyday conversation.

Activities Overview

Students read a short dialogue and match common sleep-related idioms such as tossing and turning, dead to the world, out like a light, burn the midnight oil, put your head down, sleep a wink, and beauty sleep to their definitions. Then they complete sentences using the correct idioms from Activity 1. After that, students decide which idiom most accurately describes 6 situations given, and then answer engaging speaking questions about their own sleep habits and routines.

Students work with a second set of expressions, including sleep on it, hit the hay, up with the lark, go to bed with the chickens, sleep like a baby, and get up on the wrong side of the bed. They read short dialogues and match idioms to definitions and explore how these phrases describe routines, decisions, and mood. To practise, learners rewrite sentences using appropriate idioms while keeping the original meaning. This productive task deepens understanding of nuance, register, and grammatical flexibility.

The last two activities focus on speaking: First, students discuss a few conversation questions given. Finally, they role-play a situation, using 2-3 idioms from this lesson.For more speaking practice, you can use the printable conversation cards.