Idioms with Body Parts Activity

How to use this Activity?

This interactive PDF was designed as a task-based ESL activity you can use during any number of different types of lesson plans. The bulk of the activity deals with useful and well-known idioms connected to body parts.

The task is meant to take up about 30 minutes of class time with your intermediate students. However, you can use it with more advanced students or groups as long as you expect more detail.

Page 1: Distribute a PDF to each student or simply display the PDF for everyone to see. Students will try to match the idiom with its definition at the bottom. For more of a challenge, you can have students try to guess first what they mean before looking at the definition. The answers are found on page 2.

Page 2: Here you will find the idioms from page 1 cut into pieces. Put students into pairs or small groups. Their goal is to mix and match the different halves in order to create their own new idiom by following the directions on the PDF. Give them a time limit to create their first idiom and present it to the class. Repeat as many times as you would like.

Page 3: Now that they’ve created their own idiom with the help of the old ones, students will come up with entirely new expressions for the English language! They will create their expressions by filling in the blanks of the prompts on the right with at least one body part from the column on the left in order to fulfill one of the definitions in the middle. They are NOT limited to using only body parts in their new idioms!

Have a hair in my soup: to be stressed out