First day at a new job: Meeting the team and asking questions

Summary

This ESL lesson plan is designed for A2 elementary-level students to practice English for a common life event: the first day at a new job. The material uses listening and reading exercises to help students learn and use essential vocabulary and grammar for meeting new colleagues, understanding initial tasks, and asking basic questions in a professional environment.

This lesson helps students build confidence by focusing on the Past Simple tense to describe their first-day experiences. Activities include a warm-up discussion, a listening gap-fill, a vocabulary matching task, and a reading comprehension exercise. The lesson concludes with a guided speaking activity, allowing students to apply what they have learned in a practical, communicative way.

Activities

• A warm-up discussion to activate students' prior knowledge and feelings about starting a new job or attending a new school.
• A listening comprehension task where students fill in the gaps while listening to a short audio about someone's first day at a new office.
• A vocabulary practice exercise to match key workplace terms like "manager," "team," and "task" with their correct definitions.
• A grammar exercise focusing on the Past Simple tense, helping students complete sentences with the correct regular and irregular verb forms.
• A reading comprehension activity based on a short blog post about a new employee's first day, followed by multiple-choice questions to check understanding.
• A final speaking practice section with discussion questions that encourage students to use the lesson's vocabulary and grammar with a partner.

First day at a new job

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Vocabulary focus

The vocabulary section introduces essential A2-level words for a workplace context. Key terms include "office," "team," "manager," "desk," "introduce," and "task." Students learn to use these words to describe a typical first day at a new job through a definition-matching exercise.

Grammar focus

This lesson concentrates on the Past Simple tense. It provides a clear overview of how to form the past tense for regular verbs (adding -ed) and common irregular verbs. The lesson also covers the use of the verb 'to be' (was/were) and how to construct negative sentences and questions.

First Day at a New Job: Meeting Team & Asking Questions (A2)

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