88 Unit 5
Refer to the grammar reference on SB page 136, now or at the end of the lesson and go through it with them.
Model the task by identifying your birth time in the text and saying if the description is good for you or not or if there’s another one you would prefer. Ask students to work in pairs, then call on individuals to tell the class.
Extra ideas: Ask students to work in pairs.
One partner picks a personality description, the other has to guess which one by asking questions.
Ask: Do you agree with this statement: There is a connection between your character and the time of day you were born? (Answers: No, I don’t, it’s silly! / I’m not sure. / Perhaps it’s true.)
10 EVERYBODY UP! Energise your class with this walk-around activity. Go through the list first to check comprehension. You may want to give one trait to each student, or ask each student to find three people for each category.
Speaking
11 GUESS Model the example conversation with one or two students. Remind students of their answers to exercise 9 as these will help them with this activity. Ask students to stand up and walk around the classroom. Play background music if appropriate. Students should spend one minute with each person and try to find out when they were born and what they are like. When you ring a bell (or use some other signal) they should switch to another partner.
Extra ideas: Tell students to write a sentence on a piece of paper. They should write the month, year, time and place they were born, eg I was born in March 1989 at 4 o’clock in the morning in a hospital in Recife. Collect in all the pieces of paper then hand them out at random around the class. Students should then try and find the person whose sentence they now have.
Ask students to find someone who was born at the same time as them. Then ask them to find ten things they have in common and three things that are completely different.
Explore
For this activity, students should type into their browser the name of a famous person (not some-body from this unit) and place of birth. As an example, you could ask if anyone knows where Freddie Mercury (the singer from the rock band Queen) was born (Zanzibar).
Movies & Music
Read through the instructions and text for the first section and teach / elicit any difficult vocabulary, eg fish market, planet, rocket, perfume, murderer, central.
Students can do the task in class or for homework and you can check answers in the next lesson.
Extra questions for class or for homework Movies
How many Superman films are there?
Who is your favourite Superman actor?
What’s the name of the main villain (baddy) in the films? (Lex Luthor)
Which actors play him in different films?
(Gene Hackman, Kevin Spacey, Jesse Eisenberg)
Perfume was originally a book and it became a novel. How many other films do you know that were originally books?
Music
How many other songs by this famous group can you name?
Can you name the members of the group?
Answers Movies
1 on another planet 2 in a fish market Superman had special powers and was incredibly strong.
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille had an amazing sense of smell.
Music
The song: Yellow Submarine The group: The Beatles
Culture notes: Superman was originally a comic-book superhero, created by two school students, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, and published by DC Comics. The story goes that he was born on the planet Krypton and then sent to Earth in a rocket moments before the planet exploded. He was brought up as
Unit 5 89 Clark Kent, an ‘ordinary’ boy, by an American
farming couple, but he soon realised he had very special powers, which he uses to fight evil and help people.
There have been at least six Superman films including: Adventures of Superman (1952), Superman (1978), Superman 2 (1980), Superman 3 (1983), Superman Returns (2006) and Batman v Superman (2016).
Perfume: the story of a murderer is based on a book, Das Parfum, which was written in 1985 by German writer Patrick Süskind. It became a film nineteen years later in 2006.
Set in eighteenth-century France, it tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (grenouille means frog in French), a man who grows up with an extraordinary sense of smell. He becomes interested in learning about and creating perfumes, and he also becomes interested in murder. He smells and stalks his victims! The film starred Ben Whishaw and Dustin Hoffman.
Yellow Submarine is a song written for The Beatles by Paul McCartney in 1966, and one of the rare Beatles songs sung by Ringo Starr.
It went to number 1 in the UK, and stayed there for four weeks. In 1968 it became the title track of an animated film also called Yellow Submarine.
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in the 1960s – and probably the most influential and successful band of the rock era. Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote most of their songs and played guitar, George Harrison played lead guitar and Ringo Starr was their drummer.
Lesson 2 There weren’t many events. pp46–47
Aims
The focus of this lesson is to practise the past forms there was / were, learn ordinal numbers and find out about Olympic sports.
Warm-up
Ask students what they know about the Olympics.
Write the following on the board: The first Olympic Games – Where? When? Modern Olympics – How often? Where? Students can work in groups and brainstorm ideas. Tell students they will find out
much more about the Modern Olympic Games in exercise 13 in this lesson.
Reading
1 Ask students to describe the photos and say how they are different. Ask, eg Where are these two men from? Look at the medals and elicit the correct names (gold, silver, bronze).
Ask students to think about how these two men could be linked. Discuss the questions as a class and write their guesses on the board.
Don’t check answers yet.
2 Allow time for quiet reading. Then check the ideas on the board. Check comprehension of key new vocabulary, eg poor, water seller, athlete, winner, marathon, runner, farmer, event.
Point out the grammar note under the text.
Explain that these are all verbs and their past simple forms. Don’t worry about teaching the past simple at this point as it comes in the next unit, but the students should be able to recognise and understand these words as lexical items. They are needed for clear comprehension of the article.
Answers
1 It is about two great long-distance runners.
2 They both won marathons.
3 This activity focuses on the first section of the article only. Ask students to cover it, then read through the sentences. Students work individually before comparing answers with the article.
Extra idea: To extend this activity, ask students to make additional sentences about Spyros Louis using was or were, eg His father was a water seller.
Answers
1 wasn’t 2 was 3 weren’t 4 wasn’t 5 were 6 were
MA For an extra challenge, ask students to close their books. Give them the prompt words and ask them to make the sentences, eg Teacher: 1973
Students: He wasn’t born in 1973.
90 Unit 5
4 This activity focuses on the second section of the article only. Ask students to cover it, then read through the sentences. Students work individually before comparing answers with the article.
Extra idea: To extend this activity, ask students to make additional questions about Haile using was or were, eg Where was he born?
Answers
1 Ethiopia 2 Geb 3 100 years 4 10km 5 10,000m race (at Atlanta Olympics) 6 In London, in 2002
Extra idea: Ask students to highlight all the instances of the past of be in the complete article.
5 Tell students to look at the questions in exercise 4 and use them as a model to write questions about Spyros Louis. Monitor students as they work and make a note of any common errors that would be useful to explain to the class as a whole.
Extra idea: Ask students to find one
difference and one similarity between the two men. Ask which of the two athletes they find the most interesting and why.
(Answers: Differences: Louis died in 1940, Gebrselassie is still alive. They were different nationalities and different races. They were born in different centuries. Their fathers did different jobs. They were at different Games in different events: marathon / 10,000 metres.
Louis won in his home town.
Similarities: Their families were poor. They were athletes at an early age. They were both 23 years old when they won their first race.
They were both marathon runners.)
Explore
For this activity, students should type into their browser long-distance runner or marathon runner.
They should come up with many names, but they should discuss in groups which runners they think are the greatest ones in the world at the moment.