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HighImpactEnglish

  • Writer's pictureJames

You Need to Calm Down!

Catchy Taylor Swift song with a fun visual video promoting tolerance and gay rights. Leads nicely towards debating social issues and a roleplay in which students take on extreme liberal or conservative personas.


Warmer

Set the Scene.


The first few activities can be done with either one of these:


Play the song (or part of it) sound only as background during a previous activity or as students walk into class.

Anyone know this song? Who do you think it's by?


Slide 2 (lower only) – You´re going to see these activities (run through vocab – click on image to reveal)

Slide 3You´re going to see these people. Do you recognise any of them?


(for a full list of the video's cameo appearances, see this article)


Slide 2 gives basic vocab and 3 shows the stars to look out for in the video.

Show the video.


Play 0.00 - 2.04.

  • Can spot the celebrities?

  • Try to remember what they are doing.


Slide 4: Students recount what they saw tell each other what they saw “first I saw Ellen getting married”

Here they are in order of appearance.

  • What is the video about?

  • What do the celebrities have in common?



Language focus and Listening


Slides 5-9 go through lyrics.

In each slide you can play the relevant section by clicking on the speaker in the top right corner.

Every time you click elsewhere on the slide, it will reveal more of the lyrics (the reason they are yellow rather than blacked out is it allows you to write over it on the board if you wish)


Spot the Pop Queen

Speculation and Fun


Tell students they are going to see 8 of the world's most famous singers on stage and ask them to see how many they can recognise.

Play 2.17 - 2.40.

Slide 10 Students speculate about who each queen is imitating.

Slide 11 Reveal the answers


Follow up


Debating Social Issues


The song critiques socially conservative viewpoints (ironically, there is little tolorerance of the intolerant).

Slide 2: Show a reactionary and stereotypical hippy. What issues might these two characters differ on?


Optional Grammar Activity (B1-2)

The idea of this is to showcase a mock debate and encourage longer more complex language in the next task using linkers.

Slide 3: This shows a mock debate between these two characters on the issue of car use - students have to place the linking words. Slide 4: remember key vocabulary.


Debating Game

Slide 5: students choose a topic, then toss a coin. They then have to adopt a role depending on the coin toss. Slide 5has phrases for introducing and responding to opinions, or you may choose to use slide 6 in order to focus on a different language aspect.


In my experience, teens tend to really enjoy taking on extreme viewpoints and embrace the freedom of taking on an alternative identity. However, the activity doesn't always go so well with adult groups who may prefer to debate the issues without adopting roles.
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