Self-care

This lesson plan is great to get your students to discuss the importance of self-care for mental health and emotional well-being. It is packed with useful vocabulary, speaking activities, and a bit of grammar. It will work great in combination with the worksheet “Phrasal verbs: mental health”, and “Idioms: kindness” or the video-based lessons: “The benefits of being in nature“, “The science of kindness“,  “Societal expectations“, “Self-confidence“, “Communication styles: Assertive vs aggressive“, “Time to take a mental health day?“, and “The healing power of art“.
Collocations: First students work on collocations with take (take a rain check, take a break, take your time), set (set aside time, set boundaries, set goals), and get (get in touch, get out of your routine). Students need to guess which verb completes all phrases in each group. Definitions are also given. To practise, students complete a few self-care-related statements with the correct word or phrase and then discuss the phrases with a partner.
Functional language: Students learn different ways to say “no” to invitations (I can’t make it, I’ll take a rain check, it’s not my thing). They are asked to complete the phrases with the correct word and then practise inviting each other to different events and declining the offer.
Word formation: Students work on the different forms of the words kind, grateful, appreciate, and accept. compassion. First, they create the nouns from the adjectives and then they choose the correct option to complete 4 questions. After that, they ask each other the questions.
Video: Students watch a video called “Self-care” and answer 7 true/false questions. Then they watch the video again and write down examples of self-care, followed by a discussion on the topic.
Grammar: students learn verb patterns of the verbs stop, try, mean, go on, remember, and forget. They need to work out the difference in meaning for each pair of sentences. Then, they are asked to find and correct the mistakes in 8 sentences. Finally, they write down tips on how to improve your well-being, using the correct verb pattern.
The set of conversation cards provides additional speaking practice.
Students can further develop the topic by researching the suggested homework questions or taking advantage of the additional resources on www.theenglishflows.com
This lesson will work great in combination with the lesson plans: “Meditation and the brain”, “Emotional intelligence at work”, “Using sport psychology to improve our everyday lives”,  “Why do we laugh” and the worksheets  “Phrasal verbs: emotions” and “Phrasal verbs: mental health”