Sample Lesson 1: Biographies

INTERNET LESSON: BIOGRAPHIES

TEACHER'S NOTES

Level: Intermediate +

Time: 1hr

1. State the following aims

To present and practise conjunctions for contrast

To provide practice in scanning skills for specific information

To provide practise in controlled web browsing

To provide practice in writing simple comparative descriptions

2. Pre-task / Language focus

1. Put the following two names on the board:

Sylvester Stallone

Mohammed Ali

2. Pre-teach: 'to have something in common'

3. Elicit that these two people have one thing in common: boxing - but that their interest in boxing is different.

4. Build up this model to introduce linkers:

Both Sylvester Stallone and Mohammed Ali are from the US. In addition, they are both involved in boxing. However, MA was a real boxer whereas/whilst SS only acted as one. Another difference is that MA is a committed Muslim whereas / whilst SS never really speaks about religion.

3. Directed browsing

1. Divide the class into teams - two or three teams of four is ideal.

2. Put the following two names on the board:

Yuri Gagarin

Buddy Holly

3. Find out if students know anything about them / tell them that Yuri Gagarin was a famous astronaut, Russian etc. and that Buddy Holly was a famous American singer in the 1950s. Then tell the students that these two have something in common. They are going to find this out on the WWW.

4. Ask the students to follow the instructions to get into the WWW to find the answer as quickly as possible.

5. Conduct feedback: Both were killed in air crashes

6. Reflect on the skills they have used to find the information:

· They do not need to read every word, They only have to focus on content words, The words at the beginning of each sentence give a clue about the whole sentence so they can accept or reject sentences quickly and move on to the next one, They should not use their fingers to point to the text word by word, They do not need to read the text aloud

4. 'Freer' browsing'

1. Put on the board the first pair of names of other famous people. Each team must find the biographies of the two people and what they have in common:

The Pair
Antonio Gaudi	Johan Cruyff
George Harrison	Ravi Shankar
Mohandas Gandhi	John Lennon
Peter Sutcliffe	Anthony Hopkins

5. Response

1. Students research two other celebrities in pairs and find out what they have in common. Person A of the pair should be given one of each of the pairs below. Person B, the other. Each fill in a table to collect the information. Example celebrities:

Pair A	Nelson Mandela	Vaclav Havel
Pair B	Robert Falcon Scott	Ernest Shackleton
Pair C	Adolph Hitler	Marilyn Monroe

2. Person A and B come together, find out about each other's celebrity and then together write a comparison of the two people using a model presented in the Lead in / Language focus.