Formal and Informal Situations

A 40-minute Grade 4 lesson on differentiating contexts that call for formal English and situations where informal is appropriate.

Formal and Informal Situations is a free 40-minute Grade 4 English lesson plan for Common Core standard SL.4.6 — tell when to use formal English and when informal is fine. It is timed across 5 sections, gives the exact wording to use where the wording carries the meaning, names 3 misconceptions with the teaching move that addresses each, and ends with an exit ticket and a printable worksheet with its answer key.

Grade:: Grade 4
Length:: 40 minutes
Standard:: SL.4.6

Grade 4 · Speaking & Listening

SL.4.6

Differentiate between contexts that call for formal English (e.g., presenting ideas) and situations where informal discourse is appropriate (e.g., small-group discussion); use formal English when appropriate to task and situation.

Objective

Students will be able to rate a speaking situation on four features (how well you know the listener, their role, how many are listening, whether it is recorded), choose formal or informal English from those ratings, and say the same request both ways.

Students are successful when they can

Rates a situation on all four features and uses the ratings, not the topic, to choose a register.
Turns an informal request into a formal one by changing greeting, full words and a polite form ("Could... please?").
Names a situation where informal English is the right choice and says why formal would sound strange.

What you need

Six situation cards (listed in Guided practice)
A four-feature rating grid on the board, rows: Know them well? Their role? How many listening? Recorded or written?
Mini whiteboards and pens
The printable practice sheet linked at the end of this plan

The lesson

Warm-up — same request, two ways

5 min

Write two versions of one request on the board: "Hey, can we use the gym Friday? It's for chess club." and "Excuse me, Mrs. Patel. Could the chess club use the gym on Friday at lunchtime, please?"
Ask: "Who would hear the first one? Who would hear the second?" Fish for: a friend helping set up; the principal.
Ask what changed in the words. List on the board: greeting ("Hey" to "Excuse me, Mrs. Patel"), full words ("It's" gone), polite form ("Could... please?"), more exact detail ("at lunchtime").

Teach — the features, not the label

13 min

Draw the four-feature grid: "Do I know them well?", "Are they in charge or a stranger?", "How many are listening?", "Is it recorded or written down?". Each feature is marked "casual" or "formal."
Rate one situation together: "Telling your best friend about a movie at lunch." Know them well — casual. Role — friend, casual. How many — one, casual. Recorded — no, casual. Four casuals: informal English is right.
Change one feature: "Now you're telling the same movie to the whole class for a book-and-movie review that will go on the school website." Re-rate: how many — formal; recorded — formal. The register moves up, though the topic did not change.
Show that formality is not about the topic. Rate "Telling your best friend that your dog died." It is a serious, sad subject — but all four features are casual, so informal English is right: "I'm really sad. Biscuit died on Sunday." Speaking formally ("I regret to inform you that my dog has passed away") would sound cold to a friend.
Give a formal-sounding situation that is actually informal: "Explaining the rules of tag to a kindergartner." The listener does not know you well, but they are small and there is one of them; "One must remain behind the line" would confuse them. Simple, friendly words are the right choice.

“It is not about how serious the subject is. It is about who is listening and how — how well you know them, who they are, how many there are, and whether it is being kept.”

Guided practice — rate six

12 min

Pairs take six cards: (1) giving the morning announcements over the school speaker; (2) asking your grandmother on the phone what time dinner is; (3) thanking a visiting firefighter in front of the class; (4) telling your teammate at practice to pass the ball; (5) asking the librarian for a book on volcanoes; (6) leaving a voicemail for a friend's parent to say you can come to the party.
They rate each on the four features in the grid and sort them from most to least formal. Expected ends: 1 or 3 most formal, 4 least formal.
On whiteboards they write one sentence for the most formal and one for the least: "Good morning, everyone. Today's lunch is pasta." and "Pass it, quick!"
Each pair argues one contested case. Card 6 is the usual one: you know the parent a little, they are an adult, one listener, but it is recorded. Accept either register if the features are cited.

“I don't want to hear "it feels formal." Tell me which feature makes it formal.”

Independent practice

8 min

Students complete the printable register page, which gives situations to rate and sentences to adjust between formal and informal.
Ask them to write the deciding feature next to at least two of their answers.

Close

2 min

Take card 2 (phoning your grandmother) and change one feature: "Now you are calling the school office to say she is picking you up." Take the new register and the feature that changed it — the role of the listener.

What goes wrong, and why

Each of these is a reasoning error rather than carelessness. The fix addresses the reasoning.

Ties formality to topic: says telling a friend "my dog died" needs formal English because it is serious.

Why: Serious subjects are often heard in formal settings — news, assemblies — so seriousness and formality arrive together and get treated as the same thing.

Fix: Rate the dog example on the grid: four casuals. Then say both versions aloud ("I regret to inform you..." and "Biscuit died on Sunday") and ask which a best friend would want to hear. The audience decides, not the subject.

Treats formality as one dial: rates a situation "medium formal" and cannot say why.

Why: Register is felt as a single overall quality, so students have no vocabulary for the parts that produce it and cannot adjust one of them.

Fix: Insist on the four named features and change only one at a time, as with the movie review going on the website. Each feature can move independently, and the student says which one moved.

Assumes formal is always safer: tells a teammate "Would you kindly pass the ball?"

Why: School rewards formal English, so it seems like the "correct" version everywhere, and informal seems like a mistake to be corrected.

Fix: Use the kindergartner and teammate cases, where formality is strange or cold, and say so plainly: matching the situation is the skill, and informal English is correct where the features call for it.

If they are not there yet

Rate on two features (know them well? how many listening?) rather than four.
Sort three situations rather than six: the firefighter, the grandmother and the teammate.
Give a formal word bank for rewrites: "Hey — Hello / Excuse me"; "Can I — Could I, please"; "stuff — things"; "yeah — yes."

If they finish early

Find a situation where two features pull opposite ways — for example, interviewing your own grandfather for a recorded class podcast — and write how you would speak and why.
Write a short dialogue where a speaker shifts register mid-conversation when the principal walks into a chat with a friend, and label the line where the shift happens and the feature that caused it.
Write three sentences about the register your family uses at the dinner table compared with when a visitor comes, naming the feature that changes.

Exit ticket

Situation: you ask the bus driver, whom you have never met, if this bus goes to Elm Street. Rate it on the four features, choose formal or informal, and write the question you would ask.

What to look for: Ratings that cite features (stranger, adult in charge) and a polite question: "Excuse me, does this bus go to Elm Street, please?" "Informal because it's not important" means topic-thinking; "Hey, Elm Street?" with formal chosen means the rewrite moves need practice.

Printable practice for SL.4.6

Free to print and copy, answer key included. Each sheet can generate a fresh set of problems for a retake.

Formal and Informal EnglishCircle the right answer.

Questions about Formal and Informal Situations

How long does the Formal and Informal Situations lesson take?

40 minutes, split across 5 timed sections: warm-up 5 min, teach 13 min, guided practice 12 min, independent practice 8 min, close 2 min. The minutes are stated per section and add up to the stated length, so the plan can be cut or extended at a section boundary rather than abandoned halfway.

Which standard does Formal and Informal Situations teach?

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.4.6 — SL.4.6, Speaking & Listening for Grade 4: “Differentiate between contexts that call for formal English (e.g., presenting ideas) and situations where informal discourse is appropriate (e.g., small-group discussion); use formal English when appropriate to task and situation.” In plain terms, tell when to use formal English and when informal is fine.

What do I need to teach this lesson?

Six situation cards (listed in Guided practice), a four-feature rating grid on the board, rows: Know them well? Their role? How many listening? Recorded or written?, mini whiteboards and pens and the printable practice sheet linked at the end of this plan. Everything listed is either ordinary classroom equipment or a free printable from this site — there is nothing to buy and nothing to prepare beyond photocopying.

What mistakes should I expect in this lesson?

Three, each a reasoning error rather than carelessness: ties formality to topic: says telling a friend "my dog died" needs formal English because it is serious; treats formality as one dial: rates a situation "medium formal" and cannot say why and assumes formal is always safer: tells a teammate "Would you kindly pass the ball?". The plan gives the thinking behind each one and the teaching move that addresses the thinking rather than the symptom.

How do I know whether the lesson worked?

The exit ticket asks: “Situation: you ask the bus driver, whom you have never met, if this bus goes to Elm Street. Rate it on the four features, choose formal or informal, and write the question you would ask.” Ratings that cite features (stranger, adult in charge) and a polite question: "Excuse me, does this bus go to Elm Street, please?" "Informal because it's not important" means topic-thinking; "Hey, Elm Street?" with formal chosen means the rewrite moves need practice. That tells you whether the class needs a reteach or a thirty-second conversation before you plan tomorrow.

Is there a worksheet to go with Formal and Informal Situations?

Yes — 1 printable SL.4.6 worksheet, linked at the end of the plan and free like the rest of the site. Each one comes with an answer key and 25 versions, so the practice after the lesson can be a different paper on every desk.

Is Formal and Informal Situations free to use?

Yes. The plan, its printables and their answer keys are free to read, print and photocopy for your own class, with no account and no email capture. It was last reviewed on October 8, 2026. Please do not resell it or republish it as your own.

Last reviewed 2026-10-08. Aligned to SL.4.6 of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts.