Feelings
- Sep 8, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: May 12
ESL Lesson Plan Feelings takes students on a warm and thoughtful journey through the world of emotions. From a relatable warm-up about everyday situations to a feelings song, a visual emotion wheel, and a grammar focus on -ing and -ed adjectives, learners build both the vocabulary and the language tools to talk about how they feel with confidence. The lesson also includes a reading on how to improve your mood and a personal writing task.
📄B1 ⏱️60 min 📁16 slides
Outcomes and skills:
Expanded vocabulary for describing feelings.
Listening comprehension with authentic materials (song).
Grammar accuracy with adjectives ending in -ed and -ing.
Vocabulary
Pleasant feelings:
energetic
confident
proud
inspired
peaceful
content
Unpleasant feelings:
heartbroken
lonely
hopeless
grumpy
irritated
disgusted
terrified
anxious
worried
Lesson plan
Warm-up:
Six imaginative scenarios get students talking right away: What if your best friend forgot your birthday? What if you won a free trip? What if you had to sing in front of the whole class? A natural and personal way to activate emotional vocabulary before the lesson begins.
Discussion
Students look at six animated images from the video and discuss what they think is happening in each scene — building anticipation and activating top-down processing before watching.
Song: Pre-Listening Quote
Before watching, students read a short quote from the song — "This feeling is a message from my brain. I'll give it time, I'll give it a name." — and discuss what they think it means.
Video: The Feeling Song
Students watch and listen to a 4-minute 28-second animated song, paying close attention to the feeling words used throughout.
Feelings Wheel: Emotion Categories
A visual wheel presents thirteen emotion words organised into five core categories: Joy (energetic, confident, proud), Happiness (inspired, peaceful, content), Sadness (heartbroken, lonely, hopeless), Anger (grumpy, irritated), Disgust (disgusted), and Fear (terrified, anxious, worried).
Vocabulary: Match Words to Emojis
Students match all thirteen feeling words to the correct emoji — a fun and visual way to check understanding and consolidate meaning.
Practice: Which Feeling Fits?
Nine everyday situations (being alone in a dark forest, getting a good test result, losing your phone, seeing a bug in your sandwich, and more) invite students to choose the best feeling word for each one.
Grammar: Adjectives -ing and -ed
A clear two-part grammar explanation introduces the key rule: -ing adjectives describe the thing or situation (This movie is terrifying), while -ed adjectives describe the person's feeling (I feel terrified). Seven word pairs are presented with examples drawn from real contexts.
Grammar Practice: Fill in the Blanks
Students complete a short story about a class trip to an old castle, choosing the correct -ing or -ed adjective in each gap — a contextualised and memorable way to practise the grammar.
Discussion: Feeling Sad
Two questions open a personal conversation: What do you usually do when you feel sad? How can you make yourself feel better?
Reading: How to Improve Your Mood
Students read four short tips: eat healthy food, move your body, enjoy your hobby, and talk to people — each with a brief explanation using target vocabulary in context.
Writing Task
Using the reading as a model, students write three personal tips about what helps them feel better, using feeling adjectives naturally in their own sentences.