ESL Lesson Idea: Reporting Emergencies

Students should know how to access community emergency services, and be prepared to use the telephone to do so.

• Magazine pictures of accidents and emergencies.
• Toy phones or cardboard cut-out phones.
• Student Handouts: Emergency Situations and Calling 911

• Target vocabulary: medical emergency, accident, injury, fire, crime, stolen car, apartment complex, single family home, etc.
• Using the handout Emergency Situations, discuss different kinds of emergencies. Review pertinent vocabulary.
• Using the handout Calling 911, talk about who to call in different kinds of situations and identify the important items that must be reported in an emergency call.
• Practice asking and answering personal information questions. Make sure that students are comfortable and understandable as they give the necessary personal information.
• Then model the conversation in the handout Calling 911.
• Clarify any of the questions that the students may not understand, then have them practice the conversation in pairs – first face-to-face, then back-to-back.
• Let each student pair select a magazine photo. Have the students work in pairs to create their own emergency-911 conversations in response to the pictured emergencies.