Additional Activity 1: Vocabulary Brainstorm

TeachingEnglish | Lesson plans

These five additional activities can be used in conjunction with the main lesson plan for the Odyssey 2050 project.

Additional activity 1:‘vocabulary brainstorm’

Write ‘climate change’ and below this ‘act now’ in the centre of the board.

Put the students in pairs/small groups.
Tell the pairs to write down on a piece of paper as many words or ideas connected with global warming that they can think of in 2 minutes.
At the end of the time, students count the number of words they have written down.
The students with the highest number of lexical items read out their ideas and the teacher writes them on the board. Other students look/listen and add any further vocabulary.

Note:at this stage, it is not necessary to teach any new vocabulary as this is to further activate the learners existing schemata in relation to the film topic. If the task proves difficult, help by writing some questions around the word bubble to help stimulate ideas:

What can we do?What is the cause?

Additional activity 2: Peer correction

Before checking the answers you could ask individuals/groups to move to another students place/ timeline and watch the film for a second time and check whether their classmates have the correct/same order as them. This might be particularly useful for weaker groups. Following this peer correction, conduct whole class feedback on the correct order.
An additional way of checking the timeline of the film events would be to give 9 students one event slip each and they then have to stand in the correct order. The rest of the class waits until they have stopped moving and check to see if the timeline looks correct. Learners may like to repeat this line-up activity a few times with different students moving/checking.

Additional activity 3: Eyewitness

Students are encouraged to interpret and review the film clip they have just seen.

Put students into small groups (3-4 people).
Ask the class the following general questions which they briefly discuss in their groups:
How many humans were talking in the film? (answer: 1 Dr Diaz)
Where does the story (plot) take place? (answer: on a spaceship/spacecraft/UFO)
How many different aliens did you see? (answer: 4, with each one the class lists the teacher may wish to stick up the pictures on the board see Worksheet 2)
Which alien did you like the best? Why?
What year is it in the film?(answer 2050)
Were the aliens happy or unhappy about humans? Why? (answer: unhappy but hopeful at the end that they can change)

These focus questions are to give students ideas about the kind of information they need to include in their group’s summary of the film. The questions and time given for discussing the answers to each one should be quite brief.

Learners are then asked to write a short group ‘Eyewitness report’ about the film trailer where they write a brief summary of the Odyssey 2050 clip on Worksheet 3. The teacher should monitor and provide assistance where necessary. Group writing can help students share their individual interpretations and draw on group strengths.
Learners swap their accounts with another group who read through the report than write comments at the bottom. The reports are then given back to the original group. The teacher can select one of these reports (perhaps the one awarded the highest points) to be read out loud. This type of peer marking helps students to think about the differences between effective and ineffective writing.

This activity is adapted from Stempleski and Tomalin,‘Film’,OxfordUniversity Press, 2001, pgs 38 – 40

Additional activity 4: Dictionary skills

Give each pair or small group a dictionary.
Encourage the learners to check the meaning of any words/ phrases they are unsure of in Worksheet 3.
The teacher should monitor carefully and provide help or clarification where needed. During monitoring the teacher should note down which words students are finding particularly difficult
Based on monitoring conduct general class feedback on any challenging lexical items and ask concept checking questions to ensure understanding.

Additional activity 5: Film commentary

Put students in pairs, student A/B.
Student A turns their back to the screen/TV which shows the film trailer. Student B faces the screen. Tell the students: ‘You will tell your partner what is happening and what is being said’. ‘You do not have to say exactly the same words as the aliens, as long as you keep speaking and describing’
Play the video with no sound.
Student B describes what they can see.
After about 1 min shout ‘swap’, the students swap places and then student A describes what they can see to student B. Keep telling the students to swap places every minute or so until the end of the film.

Note: this is a light-hearted and fun activity, which is often very popular with teen learners. It works best if you model it for the class with another student first. As well as a commentary, they can also make sound effects e.g. whoosh or their own opinions e.g. this is my favourite part. With weaker students the rate of swapping places might need to be higher e.g. every 30 seconds to make the task more manageable. During the exercise the teacher can monitor and at the end give feedback on some of the good language you heard or good effort the students made etc.