Starting off
The task here is designed to get the students thinking about the year just finished to prepare them for the reading to come and get them interested in the topic. Set a time limit for the students to discuss their ideas in pairs and then nominate some students to tell the class of their ideas.
Before you read
This is to give the students some essential vocabulary before they start reading. When the students have done the matching activity, it may be worth asking them to translate the words into L1 to make sue they really understand what they mean. You could also ask how the words might relate to the past year to again make them think about the topic of the reading.
Answers: A miner (c), A volcano (e), A flood (b), An earthquake (f), A tsunami (a), To erupt (d)
First reading
This is a simple matching task which requires students to find key words in the texts which will enable them to decide what the topic of the paragraph is. Set a very strict time limit so that they don’t read the texts too carefully at this stage.
Answers: 1. c 2. e 3. b 4. f 5. a 6. d
Second reading
There are two tasks here which the students can do at the same time or one after the other. He first is another matching task and the second a true, false or no information task. For both tasks, ask the students to make sure they can justify their answers so that, when you elicit the answers from them, they explain how they decided on the answer.
Answers:
Exercise 1: 1. The Chile mine disaster (69 days) 2. The Social Network film (might win an Oscar) 3. Jose Mourinho (he won the Champions League in 2004 and 2010) 4. The ash cloud / volcano (flights were cancelled) 5. The theft of the paintings (cameras filmed everything) 6. The song for Haiti (All the money went to Haiti, not the singers)
Exercise 2: 1. N 2. N 3. F (No-one knows where the paintings are) 4. T (For the first two weeks, no-one knew if they were alive or dead) 5. N 6. F (it wasn’t very big or dangerous)
Vocabulary 1
Allow the students to work in pairs. Before they look at the text, they should try to think of the L1 equivalent of the word they are trying to find. They then look in the text. Elicit the answers and what the students think the words mean in L1.
Answers: 1. rescue operation 2. protected 3. alarm 4. laser 5. mask 6. cloud 7. ash 8. hemisphere 9. cancelled
Vocabulary 2
This is a chance for students to expand their vocabulary and to think about word families. Give them one minute to see if they can think of any of the words without looking in the text and then allow them time to find the words. Elicit what the
words are and then tell them to try to do exercise 2 alone. When finished, they can compare their answers in pairs before you elicit these from them. Make sure they got the 3rd person –s form of erupts and the plural form of celebrations.
Exercise 1: celebration, successful, worldwide, eruption, northern
Exercise 2: 1. Portugal 2. celebrate 3. successful 4. erupts 5. world 6. Northern 7. celebrations 8. worldwide
Speaking
The aim here is for students to share their own ideas and opinions on topics that they might be interested in. Set a time limit for each question and make sure that students speak English at all times. Also encourage them to give more than one or two word answers, justifying their ideas with reasons. When finished, nominate students to talk about one of the questions in front of the whole class.
Communication Task
This is designed to be a further opinion sharing task but this time students must try to agree with each other. It might be a good idea first to look at ways of agreeing, disagreeing, giving and justifying opinions. Give the students two minutes to think of their own ideas alone first and then put them in groups of four to share their ideas and try to agree on the best. Elicit ideas from each group at the end with reasons for their choices.
You are working with three other people to discuss people and events of 2010.
Think alone of your ideas for these things and then get together with the other members of your group and try to agree on one person or thing for each category.
· Sports person of the year
· Film of the year
· Song / album of the year
· TV star of the year
· TV programme of the year
· Happiest event of the year
· Website of the year
Now think of one image to put on the cover of a magazine called ‘Looking Back on 2010’
Communication task card for each student:
6 __________________
There have been earthquakes, floods, heatwaves and tsunamis this year. The volcanic eruption in Iceland in March wasn’t very big or dangerous but it did cause huge problems. A cloud of ash blew over much of the northern hemisphere. Flights all over Europe were cancelled for over a week from April 14th to 23rd.
2010 has finished and 2011 has just begun but we are looking back at some of the people and events which made 2010 what it was. Here are the first six categories.
5 ___________________
Mark Zuckerberg is the man who started the website Facebook, which now has over 500 million users. It has obviously taken a lot of time and effort to make it so successful but it was, perhaps, surprising that anyone thought it would make a good film. However, The Social Network has made $180 million worldwide and it may win a few Oscars next year.
3 _________________
In most films, art galleries are protected by lasers and alarms so it was quite surprising when, on May 20th , someone climbed into the Musee d’art Moderne in Paris and took five paintings worth €100 million. Cameras filmed everything but the man was wearing a mask. No-one knows who he was or where the paintings are.
4 ____________________
Mining is a difficult job and thousands of miners die each year. On the 5th of August 2010, 33 miners in Chile had to live underground for 69 days. For the first two weeks, no-one knew if they were alive or dead. Finally, contact was made and the rescue operation started. When the men finally got out, there were celebrations all over the world.
2 ____________________
In January 2010, an earthquake hit Haiti in the Caribbean. Thousands of people died and over a million lost their homes. To try to help, a group of singers, including Miley Cyrus, Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams and many more, made the record ‘Everybody Hurts’. All the money went to Haiti, not to the singers, and the record sold almost half a million copies in the first week.
1 ____________________
In 2004, Jose Mourinho helped Porto to win the Champions League football tournament. In 2010 he won the same competition with Internazionale of Milan. It was the first time they had won Europe’s biggest football tournament since 1965. Now he is in Spain with Real Madrid. Will he win the Champions League for a third time? It’s possible.
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