TEACHER’S GUIDE

LESSON 4: HOW OLD ARE YOU?

Video summary: Max wants to know how old he is. Anna helps him.
Functional purposes: Saying your age; asking about age
Grammar: Simple present BE; plural nouns
Letters and sounds: T, R, W, Y; /tw/, /tr/
Numbers: 10, 11, 12
Questions: How old are you?
Answers: I am _____ years old.
Key words: tree, ring, age, old, help, wrong, cry

PREPARE TO WATCH
Get students’ attention

• Introduce key words and questions by using puppets or dolls asking each other: How old are
you? and answering, I am ____. I am ___ years old.
• Ask, “How do you know a friend has a problem?” Take student suggestions like, “I look at
their face” or “I listen to their voice.” Tell students to watch for Anna and Max talking about
his problem.

Connect to students’ experiences

This can be done in native language or English.

• Have students turn to their neighbor and ask in their native language, or English for more
advanced learners, “How old are you?”
• Write some student ages in words on the board: nine, ten, eleven
• Explain in your students’ home language: in some places, young children add one-half to their
age because they want to be older. Ask: “Do children in your home country add a portion of a
year in this way?”

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Guess: What will happen?

• Tell students, “Anna asks Max the question, How old are you? She sees Max is sad. What do
you think makes him sad?” Write students’ suggestions on the board or shared screen to check
later.
• Say: “Watch the video to answer this question: How does Anna help Max?”

WATCH AND REVIEW THE VIDEO

Check understanding with specific questions (add your own as necessary)

• How old is Anna’s cat?

• How old are each of the children?
• Why is Max sad?
• How old is Max?

Talk more about the video

• Ask students what they liked, what made them laugh, and what parts they want to see again.
• Teach one or two new words from the video.
• Play the beginning of the video again. Stop when Anna asks, “Max, what is wrong? Are you
okay?”
• Ask, “How does Max answer Anna’s question?”
• Ask students to say what else happened in the video.

See How-to Guide for more questions on the video.

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ACTIVITIES
1. Consonant Blends TR and TW

Set up/materials

• Play to the end of the video showing Anna’s walk. She shows how we can count the rings of a
tree to learn its age.
• Explain to students that as a tree grows, each year it shows a ring. This helps scientists learn
about the weather history of the place and the age of a tree.

How to

• Listen to Anna saying these sounds:

/tw/ twelve
/tr/ tree
/r/ rings

• Have students practice saying the words twelve and tree as one syllable. For students whose
first language does not have these consonant blends, this may be difficult. Present other words
with the same blends for practice:

travel twenty
trip twice
train twelve

2. Letters R, T, W and Y

Set up/materials

• Write the letters Rr, Tt, Ww, and Yy on the board. Say each letter as you point at it and have
students repeat the name of the letter.

How to

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• Have students trace each letter in the air as you show how to write it.
• Say, “Big R” and write the uppercase R.
• Say, “Small r” and write the lowercase r.
• Continue with Tt, Ww, and Yy. Write the letters in uppercase and lowercase on the board and
have students practice writing them.
• Have students practice writing the letters R,T,W, and Y with the activity sheets.

Variation

• Point to the letters on the board and say, “Watch the video now for these letters. Raise your
hand when you see them in the video.”
• Play the video until the end. Ask, “What does Anna write with the letters T and R?”

Write the answer, tree, on the board.

• Ask, “What does Anna write with the letters T and W?”

Write the answer, twelve, on the board. Continue with R and ring.

• Ask, “What can we write with the letter Y?”

Write the word year on the board.

• Have students write the new words in their notebooks.

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3. Numbers

Set up/materials

• Review how to count from one to nine.

• Write the numbers ten (10), eleven (11) and twelve (12) on the screen or on the board as you
say the words.
• Point out that the students are now learning the numbers from ten to twenty. Because the
Western number system is based on the number ten, after ten the numbers have two columns.
The first column is 1, then the next column repeats the numbers from 1 - 10.

How to

• Model how to count 12 items. For example, count chairs or papers from one to 12. Count aloud
like this: “one chair, two chairs, ... twelve chairs.”
• Put students in pairs. Then ask students to find objects in the classroom they can count to
twelve. Pairs practice counting.
• Have student pairs demonstrate their counting for the class.

Variations

• Make different combinations of 12, such as three groups of four, two groups of six, etc.
• Have students collect small items such as bits of paper or small sticks or stones. Have them put
the items into groups of 12. Then have students take away the objects one at a time and count
backwards from 12 until there are no more (“zero”) objects.
• Explain that the word dozen in English means a group of 12:

A dozen eggs, a dozen apples, a dozen chairs, a dozen pencils

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4. Read and Write

Set up/materials

• Give students a copy of the Read and Write activity sheet.

How to

• Point to the first question and read it aloud: “What is it?”

• Say, “In the box below this question, trace over the dotted lines to form the letters ‘tr’ to
complete the word tree.”
• Continue, “Now, let’s write our answers to the other questions. At the bottom of the page, write
your own question and answer.”
• List the words on the board in English: tree, years, rings, old, and twelve. Have students copy
them in their notebook with other new words they are learning. Ask several students to share
their own questions and write them on the board.

Variations

• Ask students to form pairs and take turns asking and answering questions by reading the
completed words and phrases. Students can add their own question and help their partner with
the answer if needed.
• Choose two or three pairs to demonstrate their reading for the rest of the group.
• Play a brief clip of the video that shows a short phrase that Anna says, such as I can help Max!
or Max, what is wrong? Explain the meaning of the phrase if necessary and have students write
the phrase. Then see if they can change the subject and/or name of the person to write similar
phrases:

I can help (name of person)

You can help (name of person).
(Name of teacher) can help (name of student); (Name of student) can help (name of student)
(Name of person), what is wrong?

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5. How Old Are You?

Set up/materials

• Play the video segment where the children say their age: I am Alexa. I am 11 years old.

How to

• Check to see if students understand the question, “How old are you?” Write the question on the
board and have students repeat it several times.
• Explain that the reply is usually “I am __ years old.” For babies and young animals, we use
months, as in “My baby brother is six months old.”
• Have students form pairs and ask each other, “How old are you?” and answer with a complete
sentence: “I am ___ years old.”

Variations

• Teach students how to say the age of another person using pronouns he, she + is:

Give examples: He is nine years old. She is eleven years old. Max is ten years old.

• Have students say their age and then have the class say how old that student is:

Kim: “I am twelve years old.”

Class: “Kim is twelve years old.”

• For more advanced learners, teach how to ask the question for different subject pronouns:

How old am I? How old are you? How old is he/she/it? How old are they?

6. Listen and Speak

Set up/materials

• Give students the Listen and Speak activity sheet. In this activity, students will learn to ask and
answer using the expression, How many?

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How to

• Say the names of the items pictured and ask students to repeat after you: candies, nuts, balls,
tree rings, ice cream cones, flowers, apples, cats, butterflies, eggs
• Explain how to ask and answer questions about the items. “We ask a question with How many?
to learn the number of things. We can also use are there... when we ask a question with How
many?”
• Point out the example with candies and write possible questions and answers on the board:

How many candies do you see? / How many candies are there? / Are there eleven candies?
I see ten candies. / There are ten candies.

• Point out that students need only write out the number on the blank line: ten.
• Model the activity with a student. Have the student make a question about one of the pictures.
Answer with “I see” or “There are” depending on the question.
• Have students work with one or two other students. They should take turns asking and
answering as follows:

Student A: “How many flowers are there?”

Student B: “There are eleven flowers.”

Variation

• After giving some time for this practice, choose two or three pairs to demonstrate their listening
and speaking for the rest of the group.

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LEARN MORE
1. Finding Ages

Set up/materials

• Play to the end of the video showing Anna’s walk and when she finds Max’s age. She shows
how we can count the rings of a tree to learn its age.
• Explain to students that as a tree grows, each year shows up as a different colored ring. This
helps scientists to learn about the history of the weather of a place and of the tree.

How to

• Ask, “How does Anna learn Max’s age?” First, she finds a tag. Then she does math. Write the
dates on the board:

2022
2012

• Add a minus sign and a line below the dates. Perform subtraction to show the result.

2022
-2012
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Note: For younger learners, you can count from 13 to 22 using your fingers to show ten
years: “13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.” You can also write the numbers 12 to 22 on
the board in a horizontal line to show that counting from 13 to 22 (where 12 represents
zero) gives ten years.

• Explain, “The difference between the year on the paper and the year Anna is speaking is ten. So
Anna can say that Max is ten years old.”
• Ask, “Can you tell the year of your birth?” Ask a student his or her age. Write it on the board.

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• Write the current year on the board above the student’s age.
• Say, “Now, let’s see, what year is your birth date.”

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2023
- 13
2010

• Ask, “Is that right?” Explain this does not always give an exact result unless the month of the
person’s birth is considered. It is correct within one year, however.
• Pair students and have them practice doing the math to guess their partner’s birth year.

Variations

• Have students find out the birth year of family members and calculate their age using the
subtraction method practiced here. Or have students look up a biography of their favorite
celebrities or sports figures they admire and find out their birth year and calculate their age.

2. Tree Farm

Set up/materials

• Research the names of and facts about trees in your local area. If possible, bring in leaves from
a variety of local trees.
• Students can pretend to plant and care for a tree farm. Talk with students about the value of
trees in their lives. “What do we get from trees? How do trees help us?”

Possible answers may include: fruit and nuts come from trees; syrup; they give us shade;
they give us wood for building.

How to

• Ask, “What trees do we have?” Ask students to draw the local varieties of trees on the board.
See if students know the parts of a tree. Simple names for the parts may include: leaves, trunk,
and branch. Label them or have a student label the parts on the tree drawings on the board.
• Have students form small groups of four to five. Ask each group to choose a kind of tree they
want to “grow.” Provide photos from the Internet or magazines of trees or give students paper
and drawing materials to create the trees for their “tree farm.” Below each picture of a tree,
have students draw or write the good things that come from the tree.
• Have groups visit each others’ tree farms along a hallway or in different places in the
classroom. They should ask questions about the trees.
• Possible questions may be, “How old is this tree?” and “What does this tree give us?”

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Variation

• Have students compare what they learned about trees from this activity. List the benefits of
trees on the board and translate any that are given in the home language into English.

3. Tree Song

Set up/materials

• Listen to a song about trees.

• Act out one or two of these poems or songs about trees with gestures.

How to

• Ask students, alone or in groups, to create their own song about their favorite tree. They may
include movements or gestures to act out the song.

Variation

• If musical instruments are available, have some in the classroom so students can improvise with
them as they share their song in English with the class.

See How-to Guide for more activities

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CHECK UNDERSTANDING
1. Quiz

Give students the printed quiz at the end of this lesson guide, have them use the online quiz, or
simply write the questions on the board. If you want to test only their listening skills, say the
questions but don’t write them.

Questions

1. How can you learn a tree’s age?

2. How old is Max? Max is ______ years old
3. What starts with tw?
4. How ____ is Anna’s cat?
5. She is ______ years old

Answer key

1. rings
2. ten
3. twelve
4. old
5. eleven

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2. Puppet Talk

Set up/materials

• Make sure that half the class has a puppet, or that each student has a puppet. Students can use
clean extra socks, cut-out drawings of people or animals taped to pencils or sticks, or cardboard
images with two holes cut for fingers.
• Write out numbers 1-12 on pieces of paper. Put them in a bag or in a pile on a desk. Pass them
to students or have each student pick up a paper before their turn.

How to

• Write on the board: What is your name? and How old are you?
• Model the activity with one student. Ask the puppet: “What is your name?” Through the
student, the puppet gives its name. Have another student ask: “How old are you?” The puppet
gives its age based on the number on the paper the student picked up: “I am 10 years old.”
• Have students line up in two rows, those with a puppet on one side, if half the class has
puppets. Have students practice asking and answering questions using the puppets.

Variation

• If puppets are not available or are not easy to make, the students can draw characters or
animals. The teacher can also use everyday objects. How old is your desk? My desk is 9 years
old.

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