Lesson Plan 3

Class: 8th
No of students: 16
Level: Intermediate
Time: 50 minutes
Unit: Struggle for survival
Lesson: Our troubled planet
Materials & equipment:
- Worksheets;
- textbooks;
- Computers – Internet & projector in the ICT lab.

Lesson aims:
1. To enrich students’ vocabulary;
2. To develop the students’ reading skills;
3. To develop the students’ skills of using some applications on a computer, their ability to create
a mind map and identify the meaning of words related to the topic using ICT tools (pairwork);

Procedure:

Activity 1. Warm-up activity. Checking homework: An animal in danger

Interaction: Ss - T, T – Ss; Timing: 7’

Activity 2. Lead-in: using words related to environment and endangered species: reasons why
they are in danger and ways of helping them survive. Ss will create, with T’s help, a mindmap of
words related to environment and animals in danger they know in Word or Power Point or using
another tool as Mindomo. Ss work in groups of four; one of them is the leader. A student (it
could be the leader) will present the final result.

e.g.
Interaction: Ss - T, St-St, T – Ss; Timing: 18’

Activity 3. Practice: Ss receive a worksheet with short texts about animals in danger; they have
to explain the (new) underlined words choosing the proper meaning on a worksheet and to use
synonyms to replace them. Then they have to find proper antonyms for the highlighted words.
They have to use a monolingual dictionary (or search on http://www.dictionary.com/).

Facts about animals in danger

 Nowadays, there are 1,556 endangered species in danger of extinct throughout the whole
world.
 The loss of habitat is one of the most important causes of decline; for instance, there are
almost 85% of endangered species just in USA caused due to.
 Other most important factors that is driving animals near to extinction are the pollution,
climatic change and ailment.
 The Baiji dolphin used to dwell in fresh water. But because of contaminated water in
China, it became extinct. So it’s not likely that this species of dolphins will ever recover
again.
 Once the American extinct bird, passenger pigeon was in so large numbers (probably
around 1600s) that from the entire bird species in USA, passenger pigeons were
comprised of almost 25 to 40%. But due to lack of proper laws restricting the number of
birds to be hunted, people used to prey on millions of pigeons and ate them within the
next three centuries.
 New species of animals that are introduced in an area, can also disturb the existing ones
through bringing in various kinds of diseases. Hence in Australia, the red-fronted
parakeet became extinct primarily due to the launch of common house cat. Besides house
cat also affected the petite animals like numbat and bilby.
 Honeybee pollinates plants as well as vegetables and fruits, but a disease in the year 2008
affected their growth and telescoped major portion of their population. If honeybee
becomes extinct, it may result in a loss of millions and millions of dollars due to
environmental factors.
 Another main cause of making as endangered is the poisoning with different toxic
substances; for instance, the California Condor is in danger of extinct because of the
DDT poisoning.

Interaction: Ss - T, St-St, T – Ss; Timing: 10’

Activity 4. Matching and gap filling exercises (use of words related to the topic). Ss have to
work some exercises proposed by the teacher – created on https://wordwall.co.uk – using the
new words: completing it (online or) on a worksheet. T goes through the answers with the whole
class, helping them if it’s necessary.

Interaction: Ss - T, St-St, T – Ss; Timing: 12’

Homework: T asks Ss to answer the following question in 5 to 10 lines: ”What do we have to do

to protect some animals in danger of extinction?”
Interaction: T – Ss; Timing: 3’