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” 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.

Teacher’s lesson plan

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Student’s worksheet

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Student’s interactive PDF

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Conversation cards PDF

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Pre-class activities

To send the pre-class activities to your students, copy the link below.

https://theenglishflows.com/lesson-plans/time-to-take-a-mental-health-day/pre-class-activities/

Vocabulary matching

Pronunciation

The first time you watch the video, pay special attention to the correct pronunciation of the following words:

Doctor Thea Gallagher is a clinical psychologist.
There have been higher levels of anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and burnout. So sometimes to have isolated days when we can do things to recharge is really important for our mental health.
Nike also told its corporate staff to power down for a week to unwind, de-stress and spend time with loved-ones.