Time to take a mental health day?
Lesson plan overview
This FREE lesson plan explores the topic of mental health days. Students will learn useful vocabulary, watch a short video and talk about employee burnout, mental health days and other related topics. This lesson will work great in combination with the lesson plans “Self-care”, “The benefits of being in nature“, “Mental load and invisible labor“, and “Emotional intelligence at work”, as well as the worksheets “Phrasal verbs: mental heath”, “Phrasal verbs: emotions”, “Idioms: positivity, optimism and hope” and “Idioms: compassion and empathy”.
Speaking and vocabulary: The lesson begins with a few discussion questions about mental health. Next, students learn different expressions about feeling unwell (feel down, blue, overwhelmed). After that students work on different phrasal verbs they are later going to hear in the video (power through. struggle with, check in on someone). They discuss the statements given and complete a gap-fill exercise.
Video: in a pre-listening discussion, students talk about employee burnout and ways to prevent it. Then they watch a video: “Are You Okay? | How to take a mental health day” and answer 5 questions. Then students talk about the video and mental health days.
Grammar: students learn the difference between used to, be used to and get used to.
Debate: the lesson concludes with a debate about mental health days.
Pre-class activities
All video-based ESL lesson plans include online pre-class activities, which are FREE and can be completed without registration. Perfect for teachers who wish to embrace the blended learning approach. By providing students with resources and engagement opportunities before the actual class session, educators can foster active participation, enhance comprehension, and optimise in-class discussions.
The pre-class activities are optional: if you choose not to assign them, or your students don’t complete them, it will not disturb the flow of the class. You can find and review the pre-class activities for this lesson plan here:
To send the pre-class activities to your students, copy the link below.
In-class activities
Conversation cards PDF
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.
Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
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