Home improvement

The objective

To redesign/remodel a house or flat

The language

Present simple

The set-up

Make a plan of the house/flat where you live. If you´re good at drawing, make it photocopiable. If you´re not very good at drawing, make a general plan to be copied from the board. Make sure you label

• walls which cannot be torn down (these are called load-bearing walls; if you don´t know where they are, guess)
• doors (including entry-way)
• window locations
• room locations
• total square feet/meters

The low-down

Tell students that you are thinking about remodeling your flat/house and you would like their opinion about what to do. Present them with some conditions such as, you would like to turn two bedrooms into three or vice-versa; you would like a bigger kitchen or bigger bathroom(s); you would like to add a room (of any type); you need more storage space/closets; or maybe turn a terrace into room or vice-versa. Choose one, two or three conditions. Ask students to work together to redraw the plans. They can move or remove walls, doors, windows or rooms. Depending on their level, they can also discuss what general materials will be necessary, such as new windows, doors, kitchen cupboards, plaster, wood, nails, screws, tiles, lights, etc.

Now what?

Ask each pair/group to present their plans. After each presentation, stick the plans on the board and ask the class to vote on the best/most well-planned.

Time to teach

In addition to vocabulary (part of a house/flat), you can also take a look at conditionals (1st and 2nd) or reporting language (past tenses, simple future, relative clauses, etc). It really depends on what language the students use, what they have problems with or what you´d like to exploit in order to teach new grammar.

More talk-time

Have you ever made any changes to a house or flat like this?

What lessons have you learned from doing so?

Which do you prefer, an old (classic) house/flat remodeled or a brand-new one?

What are the benefits to remodeling an old house/flat, rather than destroying it and building new? What are the disadvantages?