As a Middle School and High School English Language teacher, you can use a talk about climate change and an associated comprehension quiz to help you teach listening comprehension.
. This lesson plan uses the TED talk, “The disarming case to act right now on climate change” by Climate Activist, Greta Thunberg, for listening comprehension followed by answering inferential questions, detecting emotive undertones as well as answering narrow focus questions about the vocabulary used. This lesson plan also includes an exercise of writing a response to the speaker via an informal letter, thereby allowing the students to articulate their own thoughts and opinions on the matter of climate change activism and to combine those with the information they have gathered.
Thus, the use of this lesson plan allows you to integrate the teaching of a climate science topic with a core topic in English Language, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) or Functional English.
Teacher-contributed lesson plan by Dr. Pooja Sancheti, IISER Pune, India
Questions
Use this lesson plan to help your students to:
Listen carefully and comprehend a spoken text (a talk) in English
Answer narrow focus as well as broad stroke questions related to the spoken text
Write a letter to the Climate Activist, Greta Thunberg, in response to her speech
Here is a step-by-step guide to using this lesson plan in the classroom/laboratory. We have suggested these steps as a possible plan of action. You may customize the lesson plan according to your preferences and requirements.
Step 1: Topic introduction and preliminary discussion
Begin with an open discussion in your class based on the following questions:
What do you think of climate change?
What do you think of your role as a child/young adult in reducing climate change?
Do you find yourself having different views than your family or friends about climate change?
Use a news report, ‘Greta Thunberg: 16-year-old climate activist inspired international youth movement’ by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), to introduce them to Greta Thunberg, the speaker of the recorded TED talk, which is the primary text. Thunberg is one of the most well-known faces in climate activism and is herself of school going age. Discuss her primary achievements, her personal struggles, and her arguments for activism among young adults.
The recording is about 11 minutes long. Encourage them to listen carefully and try to gather their overall impressions of the speech and speaker, as well as to note down or retain important pieces of information.
Then give them a questionnaire, which is based on the video, in print form, to answer on their own as per the instructions for each question.
Play the video recording once again so that they can correct their answers. You may spend some time discussing their responses.
Then give them a questionnaire, which is based on the video, in print form, to answer on their own as per the instructions for each question.
Play the video recording once again so that they can correct their answers. You may spend some time discussing their responses.
Instruct the students to use this format to write a letter (homework assignment) to Greta Thunberg as a response to her talk.
To complete this assignment, ask the students to think about climate change and how individuals can change the situation. Direct your students to use their impressions of Thunberg’s speech, coupled with their own ideas about climate change activism and their view of themselves as activists to form the bulk of a letter that they will address to Greta Thunberg.
Instruct the students to include the following points in their letters:
their choice of what they found most important in the talk
how they feel about the issue of climate change
what they do (or wish to do) about climate change
Thus, this letter writing exercise enables two crucial skills to be tested and reinforced: one, the ability to glean and summarize information from an external source, and two: the ability to articulate one’s thoughts and opinions on an important issue and connect that to the information obtained.
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