Inside Out

e-lesson Week starting 3rd September 2007

1. Aircraft
This week’s lesson looks at aircraft. Arguably the first ‘heavier-than-air’ flying machine was
invented by Albert Santos-Dumont, and made its first flight on 13th September 1906.
Level
Intermediate and above (equivalent to CEF level B1 and above)
How to use the lesson
1. Brainstorm on the subject of aircraft and air travel. Do the students know when the first
aircraft were developed? What do they think are the advantages/disadvantages of air travel?
2. Divide the students into pairs and give them a few minutes to consider the questions on
Worksheet A, choosing an answer from the three options. In some cases the students will
probably have to make a guess.
3. Give each student a copy of Worksheet B. Give them 5-10 minutes to read the text and find
out how many of their answers to the questions on Worksheet A were correct. Encourage
them to look up any new vocabulary.
4. Confirm the correct answers in open class.
Answers
1. b 2. a 3. c 4. c 5. c 6. a 7. b 8. b
5. For the exercise on Worksheet C you should divide the students into two teams, A and B.
The exercise is a game in which the students have to refer back to Worksheet B and formulate
questions that they then put to the other team as part of a quiz.
Each team has a table containing sixteen boxes, the words in which should be used to create
sixteen questions based on the information on Worksheet B. The teams must use the exact
words in the boxes, and avoid asking the same question more than once.
The words in most of the boxes can be used to create more then one question, and the boxes
containing only the words ‘Who’ and ‘When’ obviously offer various possibilities. It is
therefore possible that one team asks exactly the same question that the other team was going
to ask, in which case the other team has to formulate an alternative question.
Impose a time limit (e.g. 5 minutes) in which the teams have to formulate their questions. If a
team is unable to create sixteen questions, the other team should receive a point for each
‘missing’ question – e.g. if Team A can only create 12 questions, Team B gets 4 points.
When the quiz begins, make it clear that the teams can no longer refer back to Worksheet B.
The two teams take it in turns to ask and answer questions. Award one point for each
grammatically correct question, and for each correct answer. Award zero points for questions
containing mistakes, repeated questions, and incorrect answers.
When both teams have asked all their questions, the team with the most points wins.
2. Related Websites
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6330000/newsid_6339700/6339773.stm
Article from BBC Newsround (February 2007) about the first public flight of the, the Airbus
A380. Accessible to pre-intermediate level.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_6940000/newsid_6944000/6944084.stm
Again from BBC Newsround, a short text (August 2007) on the recent protest held near
Heathrow Airport to draw attention to the link between air travel and greenhouse gas
emissions. Accessible to pre-intermediate level.
http://www.century-of-flight.net/
A website giving a comprehensive overview of the history of aviation. Intermediate upwards.
This page has been downloaded from www.insideout.net.
It is photocopiable, but all copies must be complete pages. Copyright © Macmillan Publishers Limited 2007.