This lesson is based around an advert featuring a ridiculously complex invention inspired by Rube Goldberg's illustrations. The video lends itself to sequencing language, verbs of movement and prepostions, depending on the level of the students and your language goals.
This activity has 3 main stages:
Pre teach vocabulary
Watch 1 minute video
Order events in groups
Student A rewatches and describes to student B who checks order.
Students use vocabulary to describe and draw incredibly complex inventions.
Instructions
Class activities using the Google Slides document here.
It's set to view only so make your own copy to edit and use in class - here is a short video explaining how to use google slides.
Optional Warmer
GoldieBlox is a toy company that makes engineering toys for girls with the mission of "disrupting the pink aisle" and providing girls with more options for toys beyond dolls and princesses. So the advert gives us is a great opportunity to explore gender stereotypes.
Show them the picture below (Slide 1 of google slides above) and ask the following questions:
What colours did you prefer when you were little?
Do you think girls really prefer pink when they're born?
What were your favourite toys?
Do boys and girls enjoy playing with dolls and toy cars just the same?
Which of these professions tend to be associated with men or women? Why is that?
Soldier Nurse Engineer Dentist Teacher Chef Builder Astronaut
Main task
Show students the video
Use the images on slide 2 to pre-teach
vocabulary (obviously you may expand or reduce this list depending on level)
Then use slide 3 to reinforce the vocabulary and bring in prepostions of movement. These are really important in English but absent in many other languages so they are often omitted by students.
Prepositions of movement allow us to describe movement with precision and help make English such an effective language for science and engineering. They may well be less widely used in your students' first language, so it's worth making an effort to draw attention to them.
Once you have covered the target language. Students use it to put the images on slide 4 in order.
Make one copy of this slide for each group.
In these activities I tend to insist that students can only move an image after their partner has
spoken about it and it's important to set out clear expectations for what the language should be:
"This first!" NO
"I reckon the ball rolls across the room first." YES
Sequencing the images can either be done online using the google slides, or by printing out the images to be sorted manually. The video was very fast so students will probably (hopefully) be uncertain of the exact order at this stage.
Next, get one member of each group to watch the first 20 seconds in slow motion (youtube settings allow you to change the speed) and explain what happens to their teammates who order the images. Then change roles for the next 20 seconds and so on.
Finally, students label the pictures
Physically - by sticking post-its to the images, then taking a photo for a record.
Online - by adding comments to the images (see below).
Follow up Task
Put students in pairs. Each person has a different complex invention which they must describe in detail so their partner can draw it (slide 6 and 7). Again this can either be done in the classroom with miniwhiteboards or, by sharing the picture with one student online so that they can describe it to a partner in a breakout room.
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