How salmon find their way back home

Advanced lesson plan (B2 and above): How salmon find their way back home -  BUY ME A COFFEE if you like my FREE ESL content

Join these tenacious salmon on their epic journey from the depths of the oceans, all the way back to the rivers where they hatched.

In this B2/C1 worksheet, students will learn fish-related vocabulary, see six idioms related to salmon and study an article and video about these tenacious globe-trotting fish. 

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Lesson activities:

1) To warm up, students will match six pun-ny jokes related to fish with their punchlines. In the process, they will learn about fish anatomy and wordplay. Key vocabulary: scales, gills, hook, loan shark, borrow.

2) Students will watch a short video (4:37) about the lifecycle of a salmon, and how they help sustain an entire forest creek ecosystem. Key vocabulary: sloppy eater, perilous, influx.

3) Next, they will see six fish-related idioms/phrases: to be fishy, to fish for compliments, a big fish in a small pond, a different kettle of fish, like shooting fish in a barrel, to have bigger fish to fry. Students will get a chance to see the idioms in sentences, and to create their own sentences using them.

4) Finally, they will read an article from NPR about how salmon use the magnetic field of the earth to navigate back home. Key vocabulary: to spawn, to home in, glitch, to throw off, counterparts.