Colors

Language level: Pre-intermediate (A2)

Intermediate (B1)
Learner type: Teens and adults
Time: 60 minutes
Activity: Revising colours, coming up
with objects of a certain colour,
watching a short film, and taking their
own photos.
Topic: Colours
Language: Vocabulary related to colours
Materials: Short film
Overview

This EFL lesson is based around a short film by

The Mercadantes which explores how beauty can be
found in the most seemingly mundane objects, and
the theme of colours. Students revise colours,
come up with objects of a certain colour, watch a
short film, and take their own photos for
homework.

Step 1

Put your students into groups and ask them to come

up with as many colours as they can in one minute.

Step 2

Get feedback from the whole class.

Step 3

Now put your students into eight small groups.

Assign each group with one of the following
colours: red, blue, green, yellow, orange,
violet/purple, pink and multi-colour.

Step 4

Ask each groups to come up with as many objects

which are their colour, for example, a red tomato,
a blue sky, green grass, a yellow pepper, orange
juice, a violet (flower), a pink flamingo and a
rainbow (multi-colour). Give them a time limit of
Colors

three minutes.

www.film-english.com by Kieran Donaghy 2

Step 5

Get feedback from the whole class and write up

typical collocations such as a yellow taxi.

Step 6

Tell your students they are going to watch a short

film in which they will see objects of the colour
they have just looked at. As they watch their task
is to try to notice if any of the objects they
came up with are shown in the film. Show the film.

Link: https://vimeo.com/132121995

Step 7

Get feedback from your students.

Step 8

Tell your students you are going to show the film

again. This time you are going to pause at each
object and elicit the name of the object. Show the
film.

Step 9

Write the colours on the board. Put your students

into pairs and ask them to try to remember as many
of the objects for each colour.
Colors

Step 10

Get feedback from the whole class on the objects

they remember.

www.film-english.com by Kieran Donaghy 3

Step 11

Tell your students they are going to watch the

film again. As they watch they should shout out
the name of each object as it appears. Show the
film again.

Homework

Ask your students to use the cameras on their

mobile phones to capture objects of one of the
colours they looked at in class which they think
are beautiful. In the following class ask them to
show the photos of their objects to another
student. You might like to create a colour
collection film of your students photo similar to
the film they saw in class.

I hope you enjoy the lesson.

Film English is a labour of love, it takes

hundreds of hours and thousands of euros a year to
sustain and provide free English language lesson
plans. Keeping it a free, clean, ad-free
experience which is important to me and, I hope,
to you means its subsidised by the generous
support of readers like you through donations. So
if you find any inspiration, joy and stimulation
in these English language lessons or if they help
you teaching English, please consider a modest
donation however much you can afford.
Colors

www.film-english.com by Kieran Donaghy 4