A sample lesson plan

To make up for - followed by the gerund -

Transitional Lead-In:

"Can you imagine what it would be like to wake up one morning and have everyone look angry with you? And you don't understand why. But they're really very, very angry. And, finally, you ask one of them - maybe your husband or a girlfriend, maybe your children, or your parents - anyhow you ask one of them, 'Why is everyone angry with me?' And they look at you and they say, 'But don't you remember what you did yesterday?' And you answer, 'I can't remember anything about yesterday.' At first they don't believe you but after a while they realise that you're telling the truth, and they look at each other in horror. Finally, one of them decides to speak for the whole group and says, 'Perhaps we'd better give you a list of everything you did yesterday.' And they begin to write things down and this takes a good five minutes. After a long, long silence that is just terrible, the person who was writing everything down says, 'Here you are,' and gives you the list. You look at it in total disbelief. You read:

(Give them out the following list which, in this instance, would be more impressive if it were written out by hand and photocopied.)

stole money from Lucy Lucas broke a light on Irene's car wrote your name on one of Arthur's paintings hid Daisy's American passport went out with Alan's girlfriend split beer on Shirley's newspaper article put Geoffrey's camera in the 'fridge

kicked Paul on the street ate Dr. Fox's thermometer burnt Ruth's speech on statistics smoked in Rolland's room tore Peter's football uniform put on Linda's wig kidnapped Ann's mother

You can't believe it's possible and yet you trust all the people there - and... you can't remember anything about yesterday so it's probably true. You ask the group for a moment or two to make a list of your own. You list all of the things you could do that would be nice to make up for your abominable behaviour. Your lists begins like this:

invite them over for tea buy them flowers show them around your town buy them a lottery ticket ... ... ... ...

invite them out for a meal take them to a concert introduce them to someone famous lend them your car ... ... ... ...

But it isn't complete. Would you like to complete the list and as soon as you do, I'll tell you what to do to stop everyone from being angry with you.

Give them a couple of minutes to complete the list; if they want to do it in 2's or 3's that's fine. If they need prompting, tell them that what other people want is often exactly what they, themselves, most want.

Now, you have a list of things you've done to different people and another list of nice things to make up for your abominable behaviour. Now you go around to everyone in the group and you say to Alan, for example, 'Alan to make up for going out with your girlfriend, I'll lend you my car.' Or, 'Peter, to make up for tearing your football uniform, I'll give you money to buy a new one.' OK, now, everybody meets everybody. Let's go.

And, of course, you go over to someone and engage with them on this question in order to break the circle and set the activity into motion.