Discover how a tiny school shows that learning is about more than just the classroom.
Main objectives of this material
- Develop everyday office vocabulary for passing on information, including terms such as catch up on, pass on a message, follow up, on track, sign off on, swamped, get back to someone and a heads-up, practised in a dialogue, a message-pad task, a memory gap-fill and a glossary.
- Strengthen speaking through a task-based learning cycle: students first report a six-person team meeting with no help, compare their version with a model conversation between two colleagues, then complete a six-message information gap and leave a one-minute voice message for a manager who is on a plane.
- Learn and practise reported statements with said and told, the one-step-back rule (is → was, can → could, will → would), changes of people and time words (tomorrow → the next day, today → that day) and the follow-up frame You said you would... to pass on news accurately and remind colleagues politely.
What students are going to cover
In this lesson, students will discover how a message changes on its way through a team, using a weekly project meeting at a fictional company as the context. They try a cold task first, telling an absent colleague what six team members said, and then read a 14-line model conversation in which a colleague helps him catch up. After six true-or-false questions, they compare seven Monday quotes with Thursday reports to build the rules of reported speech themselves, including say vs tell. Controlled practice includes a six-item said or told gap-fill and an eight-item "While You Were Out" message task. In the main task, The Message Chain, two students exchange six messages and record one voice message for their manager, and in "But You Said...!" they act out three escalating follow-up situations with a colleague, a supplier and a manager. The package adds a teacher version with model answers, an interactive worksheet, 22 slides and a write-or-record homework. By the end of the lesson, learners will be able to report what colleagues said in a meeting, choose correctly between said and told, and follow up politely when someone has not done what they promised.
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