B2 ESL Video Lesson Plan: Failure and Creativity

Lesson Summary:
This Upper Intermediate (B2) to Advanced (C1) ESL lesson plan is built around a thought-provoking video on the theme of failure and its role in the creative process. It helps learners expand vocabulary on failure, creativity and cognitive processes, discuss quotations, predict video content, watch and analyse a short video, answer comprehension questions, and reflect on how failure contributes to creativity. Students then read an article titled The Courage to Create: Overcoming Fear of Failure, discuss it, answer comprehension questions, and write about what they have learned. The lesson develops critical thinking, speaking, and writing skills while encouraging learners to embrace risk and innovation.

Learning Objectives:
• To introduce students to the theme of failure and its role in the creative process
• To explore and reflect on the nature of creativity and its relationship with risk and mistake-making
• To expand vocabulary related to failure, creativity and cognitive processes
• To develop students’ listening, viewing and reading comprehension skills
• To improve students’ speaking and writing skills through roleplay and personal reflection
• To enhance students’ visual representing skills through multimodal composition tasks

Lesson Activities:
• Pre-lesson discussion on failure and creativity
• Vocabulary development activities
• Prediction tasks before watching the video
• Viewing and comprehension questions
• Analysis and discussion of key ideas
• Creative roleplay activity
• Reading and discussing a follow-up article
• Writing reflection based on video and article
• Critical thinking discussion

Learner Type:
Upper Intermediate (B2) – Advanced (C1) mature teens and adults

Language Focus:
• Vocabulary related to failure
• Vocabulary related to creativity
• Vocabulary related to cognitive processes

Benefits for Teachers:

• Save hours of preparation with a fully developed, flexible lesson plan
• Engage students through compelling stories and real-world themes such as emotional intelligence, character, values, empathy, personal development, identity, relationships, global issues and social issues
• Build classroom routines that integrate multimodal literacy naturally and progressively
• Foster more inclusive and differentiated learning by using varied modes of input
• Rely on a trusted methodology backed by educational research and grounded in the theories of Vygotsky, Kress, Mayer and Krashen

Benefits for Learners:

• Develop communicative competence and confidence through integrated skill-building
• Expand vocabulary and improve listening and reading comprehension through repeated, meaningful exposure
• Think critically and creatively while exploring powerful social and emotional themes
• Strengthen emotional intelligence and intercultural awareness through affective engagement with multimodal texts

Watch the short video.

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We hope you enjoy this ESL video lesson plan.

Thanks for being part of the Film English community, and happy teaching!
— The Film English Team

Transform Your English Classroom with the Multimodal Approach
This ESL video lesson plan is built around a thought-provoking short video and designed using the innovative Multimodal Approach, integrating listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing, and representing. Engage learners with real-world themes, develop communicative competence, build vocabulary and foster critical thinking through dynamic, research-informed activities. Find out more about the Multimodal Approach and join thousands of teachers transforming their classrooms with Film English.