Lesson Overview
Title of Lesson: Let’s Protect the Planet
Language Skills and Strategies in focus: Listening, Speaking
Age & Level: Secondary school B1/B2
Length of Lesson: 90 min
Materials Needed: Overhead projector, whiteboard, markers, hand-outs
Learning Objectives
1. SWBAT identify falling and rising intonation patterns with accuracy.
2. SWBAT use and show intonation in their own speech.
3. SWBAT identify thought groups and focus words and their respective intonation.
4. SWBAT recall ways they can help combat climate change.
Warm Up
Activity: Homework Review
Steps & Teacher Directions:
-Ask Ss what they discovered at home that could be contributing to climate change, writing each option on the board (ex. lights left on, showers too long, faucet left on)
-For each option, talk about what a potential fix could be
Presentation
Activity: Rising and Falling Intonation
Steps & Teacher Directions:
-Write on the board:
“Although air pollution is bad for our health, planting trees can improve the air quality.”
“The large-scale use of cars in cities, which contributes to climate change, could be reduced by introducing reliable forms of public transportation.”
-Showing the students the thought groups in the sentence, explain that longer sentences are broken into smaller units.
-Tell Ss that the last content word of a thought group is called the “focus word” and that the focus word has a major change in pitch.
-Tell Ss how low rise intonation shows an unfinished sentence, and falling tone shows a finished sentence.
-Read the sentence using both rising and falling intonations, highlighting the differences and annotating on the sample sentences.
-Give students hand-outs containing a text about climate change.
-Ss now listen to a recording and put falling and rising arrows on top of the words.
-If needed, play the audio a second time.
-Get students to peer check their answers.
-Display the answers on the board and ask students if they feel confident about recognizing these intonation patterns.
Assessment
Activity: Our Findings and Resolutions
Steps & Teacher Directions:
-Ss will be divided into small groups
-To talk about what was discovered about our carbon footprints in the homework, Ss will take turns using the following structure to talk with their neighbors:
Discuss what you found at home that contributes to your carbon footprint (e.g. “I found that I take a car to school…”)
In the same sentence, talk about a resolution to this problem (e.g. “… so in the future I will start walking.”)
-Other Ss will write down this sentence and annotate the thought groups and focus words involved
-At the end, every group has to share at least two sentences, which can be written on the board and annotated for the class to see
Wrap Up
Activity: Can You Remember?
Steps & Teacher Directions:
-Divide students into two or three groups.
-In each group, the first person begins following the sentence structure “At home I _____,” where the blank is filled in with a way they try to be environmentally friendly around home (ex. ‘turn off the lights at night,’ ‘turn off the faucet while I’m not using it,’ or ‘close the door to keep the heat in’).
-Ss take turns 1. repeating all previous sentences in order the best they can and 2. adding a new one of their own
-Ss may not repeat the same word or phrase.
