Helping English learners to talk about feeling poorly has never been so important. This activity from Natasha Ristic, a secondary school EAL and English coordinator looks at the language of feeling unwell.

This is an activity for children to learn some basic health terminology to be able to describe symptoms in case they catch a virus. Download a copy of the accompanying resource here.

Parents should read this online together with the children and discuss why it is important to be isolated and stay at home, and what would happen if someone catches a virus. Parents may wish to choose the language in which to discuss this.

The first two boxes of the comic set the scene while the third box contains colour-coded key terminology for describing the symptoms. The colour of the symptom matches the colour of the sentence starter.

Then, below the comic, there is a gap fill activity with sentence starters. The children write the sentences, making sure the colours of the sentence starters match the colours of the vocabulary for the symptoms.

The sheet should be printed for children to write the sentences. Alternatively, they may wish to look at the sheet online (to be able to see the colours) and write their sentences on another blank sheet.