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Danger: Active Volcano!
This unit should take 2-4 days, depending on time, interest, and extension activities. It is designed for advanced level students age 14 and above. Objectives Students will: Materials to Print
Activities Activity I: Pre-reading (20 minutes) Ask students if they know what a natural disaster is. As a class, come up with a definition (a sudden disastrous event in nature causing great damage). In pairs, brainstorm a list of natural disasters (earthquake, flood, volcanic eruption). Ask the students to guess which disaster you are thinking of. After each guess, give a hint that includes one of the words from the vocabulary list and its definition. For example, after the first guess you might say, "Some are dormant, or inactive for a long time." Give easier hints with each guess. You might end with, "Lava, or melted rock, explodes out of it." Activity II: Vocabulary (10 minutes) Have students look over the list and underline familiar words. In groups, have them ask each other for definitions of unfamiliar words. Go through the list as a class, asking for help with the definitions from each student. Activity III: Reading I (30 minutes) Give the students a few minutes to look over the reading. Break the students into groups of 3 and give each group a number (if there are 10 groups, the groups should be numbered 1-10). Ask each student to read a section of the passage out loud to the group. Stop at the end of each paragraph for group discussion of content and vocabulary. Ask each member of the group to write down a summary of the reading. Activity IV: Reading comprehension (15 minutes) In order to create new groups, ask one student from each group to move to a higher numbered group (one member of group 1 goes to group 2) and one student from each group to move to a lower numbered group (group 4 to group 3). Ask the new groups to compare summaries, discuss the differences, and then fill out the multiple choice questions. Go over the answers as a class. Activity V: Presentations (20-60 minutes) Tell students they are scientists studying the volcanic activity of a volcano. Together they will fill out a worksheet and then present a report to the class of the activity of a volcano. You can choose to turn this exercise into a research project or a creative activity. In the same groups from the last activity, they can either research a real volcano or invent a volcano, describing its behavior, predicting whether or not it will erupt soon, and recommending a course of action for the town. They can use the reading comprehension questions as a guide for their presentations. Activity VI: Reading II (20 minutes) Give students the reading. This can be read silently or for homework. Make sure they ask each other questions if they need to. Activity VII: Reading Comprehension (10-20 minutes) Have students answer true/false questions in pairs. Ask them to find the correct answers in the text. As a class, go over the answers, asking individual students to share where they found the correct answer. Activity VIII: Working with the past tense (20 minutes) Go over the regular past, explaining that the past can be formed by adding -ed. Note that verbs like run, fall, find and build do not take the regular -ed ending. Note also the varying past tense of to be. With verbs that end in -y, there are two possible forms. If the verb ends in a consonant + -y (hurry), form the past tense by changing the -y to -i and then adding -ed. If it ends in a vowel + -y (play), simply add -ed. Have them complete the worksheet individually. Pass it to the right and correct it as a class. Activity IX: Writing a creative passage (2-3 days) Have the students imagine they were at Pompeii for the eruption and escaped when the ash and rock fell from the sky. Ask them to write a creative passage using the past tense to describe what they saw, what they felt and what they did. When these are completed they can read them aloud to the class or go through several edits and publish a "Pompeii" class book. |