Lesson: Natural disasters

Target content: Natural disasters in the world

Target language: Names of elements (i.e., earthquake, floods, landslides, avalanches

and some distractors); vocabulary related to disasters (electricity, energy, rivers, heat,
global warming, sunlight, temperature)

Lesson objectives

By the end of this lesson students will be able to:

· make predictions and reflect on the topic of natural disasters

· understand oral and written texts related to different natural disasters.

· learn and practice content vocabulary connected to natural disasters

· express ideas and opinions using simple language

Exposition: Explanation of the different natural disasters through a video. Presentation

and discussion of how and why natural disasters are happening so frequently. Students
will predict, learn, and practice content vocabulary, listen and check, discuss, and
assess one another.

Procedure:

1. I will students a photo of different natural disasters. I will ask them to say what they see
and elicit some words related to natural disasters. Ask “What is this? Does it happen in
your country? What does it produce?” I will accept all answers, even in students’ native
language (L1).
2. Present the target vocabulary on index cards spread on a table. They could define,
classify, discuss, etc. I will use cards with pictures of natural disasters and on the other
cards the names of the natural disasters (more than the number of pictures) and they will
have to match them. I will check they understood the words.
 3. From YouTube, they will watch the video,https://youtu.be/Pn28evaXaOU Divide students
into teams depending on the amount of students, they will be assigned one natural
disaster and they will have to take down notes about what they hear. The focus will be on
vocabulary.
4. At the end of the video, the teams exchange the information they grabbed. Have students
take turns reading the information aloud, and go over any pronunciation or questions
about meaning.
5. Pass out a sheet of gapped sentences – you could gap certain STEM words, rhyming
words, or linguistically significant words (such as past participles or auxiliaries), or even
create two different worksheets and put students in pairs to listen for different language
and then compare with one another to check answers.
6. For extra credit,I will ask students (alone or in pairs) do some extra research.
7. They will do the following crossword:https://www.liveworksheets.com/fu1867928gr

Follow-up/application

1. I will conclude with a discussion of why and how natural disasters happen and why
human beings collaboration matters. I will tell them some key phrases: “I believe…”, “In
my opinion…”, “From my point of view”, etc.
2. I will assign groups and give them one natural disaster to each group and ask students to
work together to write quiz questions based on factual information about natural
disasters.

I will walk around the class to help with language as necessary.

Homework: they will do some research on natural disasters in their country.

Groups can exchange quiz questions in the next class, or I collect them, collate the
questions, and distribute one quiz to the whole class in a future session.