Daily routines is a great topic for loads of useful vocabulary, for presenting Present Simple in a realistic context, and to lead into related topics like frequency expressions and times. As well as being an easy way into those topics for (very) young and/ or low-level learners, covering daily actions can also be useful for older and/ or higher-level learners as a way to expand their vocabulary, revise and extend their knowledge of Present Simple, and lead into CLIL topics like cultural differences and biology. This article gives tips on teaching this topic to both adults and young learners.
What students need to know about daily routines
For young learners, it’s quite good to do something on just the vocabulary “wake up”, “get dressed”, “eat breakfast” first, so that they understand all the actions before you put them into sentences and link them to a grammar point. However, the students will soon need related language in order to understand how Present Simple is being used and to communicate using these words. Other language that you might want to present while covering or revising daily actions include:
- Yes/ no questions (“Do you get up at seven o ‘clock?”, “Do you have a shower in the morning?”, etc)
- Wh- questions (“What do you eat for breakfast?”, “What time do you leave home?”, “What do you do after that?”, etc)
- The time of day (“at seven o’clock”, “at nine thirty”, etc)
- Other related times (“in the morning”, “on Sundays”, “every day”, etc)
- Locations (“in the dining room”, etc)
You could also move on from “I get up at six thirty five” to third person S sentences like “My brother gets up at six thirty four”, but I’d usually leave a gap of at least a couple of classes between these Present Simple sub-topics, perhaps revising routines just before presenting third person S. You can also link to Past Simple by talking about routines generally as you revise and expand their knowledge of daily actions, then talk about one specific day such as yesterday or last Sunday.
There’s not much to understand about the actions themselves apart from maybe collocations, e.g. that we brush our hair but not our faces. Verbs and accompanying words which I’d teach and/ practise in most classes include, in approximate order of level and usefulness:
- go to bed
- go to sleep
- wake up
- get up/ get out of bed
- have breakfast/ eat breakfast
- have dinner/ eat dinner
- have lunch/ eat lunch
- brush my teeth
- get dressed/ put on my clothes
- have a bath/ have a shower
- leave home
- walk to school/ go to school
- brush my hair/ comb my hair
- watch TV
- do homework/ do my homework
- go home
- get home/ arrive home
- get to school/ arrive at school
- wash my face
- get undressed/ take off my clothes
- listen to a bedtime story
- play with my brother/ play with my sister
- put on my pyjamas
- start school
- take my dog for a walk/ walk the dog
- do exercise
- check my mail
A useful subset of daily routines that is perhaps worth making into a whole lesson is housework, as in:
- clear the table
- do some housework/ do the housework
- feed the dog/ feed the fish/ feed your pet
- hang up the washing
- lay the table
- make my bed
- take out your rubbish/ take out the garbage/ take out the trash
- tidy up my bedroom/ clean up my bedroom
- wash up/ do the washing up/ do the dishes/ wash the dishes
- water the plants
There will be another article on this site specifically on housework in EFL classes.
Typical student problems with the language of daily routines
Looking at this as a vocabulary point, students most often have problems with collocations. This is trickiest with verbs which have very general meanings in collocations like “take a shower”, “make my bed” and “have breakfast”. This can sometimes be avoided by using “eat breakfast” etc, but other verbs like “rise” for “get out of bed”, “bathe” for “have/ take a bath” and “shower” for “have/ take a shower” are too rare, old-fashioned and/ or formal to be worth teaching.
“Take a shower” etc also show how many tricky words there are between the verb and object, leading to typical student mistakes like “have a breakfast X”, “take my shower X”, “leave the home X” and “go to the school X”. This can include problems switching between “your” and “my” in questions and answers like “What time do you brush my teeth? X” There are patterns in the use of “the”, “a” and “my” in routines, but these patterns are not really teachable to the levels of students who will be studying this language point. You are therefore limited to error correction without explanation and just practising until the correct version sticks.
There can also be problems for specific groups of students such as “wake up” and “get up” not being usually easily distinguished in L1, and actions like “lay the table” not being things that are commonly talked about.
The other problem that you could produce is confusion between “I have a shower” and “I’m having a shower”. This is especially true if you use mimes to show the meaning of the Present Simple sentences, as actions in progress are more properly described with Present Continuous. Ways of avoiding this confusion including just using the imperative when you mime the actions (“Have a shower”), always putting the actions into a string of routines, and including typical words that go together with Present Simple like “every day” in every sentence.
Picture flashcards related to this topic are often ambiguous, e.g. whether they show someone getting dressed or undressed. They should therefore be supplemented with physical actions.
Preparing to teach daily routines
Things you will need to do before teaching a lesson on this language point include:
- decide which actions to present and practice (choosing just morning routines, deciding by what your students actually do in their days, etc)
- decide which actions/ mimes you will use to elicit and/ or practise them
- find or make picture flashcards for each action
- decide what version of times you will use (“ten past seven in the morning”, “seven ten a.m.”, “seven ten”, etc)
- decide which frequency expressions (if any) you will use (“sometimes”, “once a week”, etc)
How to present daily routines
If you want to present the routines before any accompanying times etc, this could be done as imperatives like “Brush your teeth”. This can be done as a kind of Simon Says game in which students usually follow the instructions but do nothing if they hear silly instructions like “Wash your breakfast”. Songs like Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush and picture books like Sandra Boynton’s The Going to Bed Book can also be used without needing to teach more than the actions. The other possibility is to always use the actions in order, as in “I wake up (then) I get dressed” etc, to make the meaning of repeated routines fairly clear without using any specific language to do so. You can then add language like “ten past seven”, “twice a week”, “on Saturdays” and/ or “sometimes”, perhaps in the next lesson.
It can also be just as easy and useful to present these points the other way around, e.g. teaching the time just from clocks and then matching those times to actions like “leave the house” and “get to school”.
With older and higher-level students who could still benefit from this language point, the topic and language could be introduced through a text on daily routines in different places in the world, or perhaps something on animals’ eating, sleeping habits, etc. Other possibilities include healthy and unhealthy lifestyles, and how green different lifestyles are.
How to practise the language of daily routines
Action songs, picture books, topics like healthy lifestyles and games such as versions of Simon Says can also be used during the practice stage. Other games etc are described below.
Daily routines flashcard memory game
Put about ten flashcards with pictures and/ or words of daily actions such as “brush my teeth” in a line on the table or on the board as you drill some related times, e.g. “one o’clock, two o’clock”, etc, or “seven ten, seven fifteen” etc. Drill the vocabulary with sentences like “I get up at seven o’clock” as you turn the cards face down, then students test each other on their memories with questions like “What do you do at seven o’clock?”, “What time do you leave home?” and/ or “Do you eat breakfast at eight a.m.?”
Daily routines memory chains
Students take turns repeating what previous people have said and then adding one more step to that daily routine, as in “I wake up at seven o’clock”, “I wake up at seven o’clock, then I wash my face”, “I wake up at seven o’clock, then I wash my face. I eat breakfast at five past seven”, etc. The game stops when everyone has forgotten the whole string. This can also be done with third person S and a character name, as in “Lucy wakes up early” etc.
Daily routines chains
One student tries to say their partner’s daily routine in order, with one point for each correct statement, stopping when they say something that isn’t true. They can skip actions in the middle, but have to stop if they say something that actually happens before what they previously said, or if their partner doesn’t usually do that thing at all.
Daily routines competitions
Students ask each other “What time do you…?” and get one point for each thing that they do earlier than their partner. This can be played with one point also if their partner never does that thing, or with students having to try again in that case.
Daily routines warmer cooler guessing game
One student asks “What time do I… (on Mondays)?” and give hints like “Much earlier” and “A little later” until their partner guesses the exact time.
Daily routines things in common
Students work together to make true sentences about their routines with “We” like “We brush our teeth twice a day” and “We get up before six o’clock on Saturdays”. They then get one point if no one else in class made exactly the same sentence, and/ or a point if the same thing isn’t true about anyone else in the class.
Complete daily routines
Students ask questions to try to write every moment of their partner’s daily routine (or just morning routine). Their partner then gets one point for each extra thing that their partner didn’t ask them about, e.g. by saying “I open the door before I leave the house”.
Daily routines mix and match
This is a great topic for which to use a book with split pages, like the books in which they can make crazy pictures (like the game consequences) and/ or crazy sentences (like Ketchup on your Cornflakes). Students turn parts of the page to make silly sentences like “Do you + eat your + hair + at seven o’clock?” and then sensible matches like “I + wash + my face + before breakfast”. The same thing can also work with cards or just a table of split sentences, but is best if you make it into a book and then cut through all the pages horizontally, like books which match up different heads, bodies and legs. To make suitable sentences, make around 11 good matches, make sure that all possible matches are grammatically correct, check that each part has at least one funny match, then mix them up so that none of the ones on the same page are the sensible matches when the book is first opened.
Daily routines chain stories/ Daily routines consequences
Make a blanked description of a day with a blank line between each sentence, with examples like “I get up at _____________________”, “After I get up, I ___________________”, “I _________________ in the living room” and “I leave the house at __________________”. Like the well-known drawing and writing game Consequences, students fill in one line, fold the paper so that the next person can’t see what has been written, then pass it on to be filled in by the next person. If you give each person one copy and ask them all to pass it on to the next person at the same time, they will each receive a fully completed version at the right time and can then read them out. They can then decide which routines make the most sense and which are funniest.
Mr Men daily routines activities
Many of the Mr Men books start with explanations of their strange routines, but this switches to past tenses when the story really starts, so the actual stories are probably not suitable to just present daily routines. Instead, you could get students to match the Mr Men by their names and pictures to descriptions like “He eats eggs with eggs and eggs, and sometimes ice cream” for Mr Strong and “I sleep 16 hours a day” for Mr Lazy.