Seasonality in business
Lesson plan overview
This Business ESL lesson plan deals with seasonal businesses and strategies to minimize the effects of seasonality (diversification and off-season marketing). Other lessons you might find interesting are: “Seasonal businesses: Halloween edition“, “Business models”, “Business relationships”, “Overpopulation” (for describing graphs), “Christmas marketing“, “FOMO marketing“, “Phrasal verbs: marketing and advertising”, “Phrasal verbs: trends and graphs“, and “Phrasal verbs: sales and selling”.
Speaking: The lesson starts with a few conversion questions about seasonal businesses.
Vocabulary: Students learn vocabulary to describe graphs and charts. First, they look at 4 graphs showing the sales of 4 seasonal businesses and match the business to the correct graph. Next, they read a short analysis for each graph and learn vocabulary to describe graphs (e.g. a surge, a boom, skyrocket, soar, pick up, spike dramatically, a slump, a dip, a plunge, plummet, a drastic decline, taper off, drop off completely). Then, students are given 2 more graphs and are asked to describe them. After that, they are given a few seasonal businesses and are asked to talk about their peak seasons, and off-seasons, using the vocabulary.
Vocabulary: Students learn vocabulary related to business seasonality (e.g. diversify, multiple revenue streams, core business, a window, inventory management, staffing). To practice, they complete a gap-fill activity and then discuss a few conversation questions.
Videos: Students watch 2 videos. The first one is about diversifying a seasonal business: “Seasonality in business revenue / being busy at different times of the year”. The second one is about off-season marketing: “Seasonal marketing tips” (this video is quite long, so students watch the first 4 minutes).
Speaking: Finally, students are asked to discuss their organization (if it experiences seasonality), or another business, and to think of an off-season marketing strategy, and ways to diversify it.
For more speaking practice, you can check out the conversation cards.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
Pre-class activities
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In-class activities
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Additional resources
Each video-based lesson plan includes links to additional resources (videos and articles), which are FREE can be found online (in the pre-class activities page. These links aim to extend the learning experience, enabling students to connect classroom knowledge with real-world applications.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
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