| LESSON OVERVIEW
This lesson plan is based on a very interesting video featuring Bill Gates who talks about what he is most concerned about in a global perspective. Surprisingly, it’s not some AI/tech-related issue but a pandemic scenario! Apart from a listening comprehension task, the worksheet also includes fear vocabulary exercises, some useful adjectives and a lot of speaking activities.
FEAR VOCABULARY
The worksheet starts with a short brainstorming exercise in which students need to come up with different ways to express that they’re afraid. It’s a good idea to do this on the board and as a whole class before giving students the worksheet. Next, students move to the second task and have to fill in the gaps with words given. The goal of the task is to give students more examples of fear vocabulary. After completing, students have to discuss the sentences and express their opinion about them.
VIDEO (LISTENING COMPREHENSION)
The video is titled “What Bill Gates is afraid of”, so as a pre-watch activity students need to think what Bill Gates might actually be worried about. Then, students watch the video and answer comprehension questions. In the next activity, students need to explain the meanings of some phrases taken from the video, e.g. the immune system, a widespread disease, an outbreak of flu, etc. Finally, students move to a few discussion points about the issues presented in the video.
EXPRESSING OPINIONS USING ADJECTIVES
The last two exercises are based on adjectives that might be useful for expressing opinions. Students get a list of such adjectives, including inevitable, likely, unstoppable, justifiable, etc. Their task is to rewrite given sentences using correct adjectives from the list. Then, to put these adjectives into practice, students have to express their opinions on some statements (find the statements on the last page of the teacher’s worksheet) using adjectives from the previous task and justifying their opinions. Decide whether you want to cut out the statement from the teacher’s version and let students work in groups on each statement one by one or hand out the whole list and let them choose the statements they want to speak about.
Extra Worksheet – Natural disasters
We recommend you an extra worksheet through which students learn names of different natural disasters as well as figure out the meanings of words in headlines from press reports related to natural disasters. It might be good idea to do it before the lesson to equip your students with more relevant language to use in the discussions. Check Natural disasters – vocabulary extension worksheet.
Looks great, I wish I had some C1 students
It’s a great topic and lesson plan! Very relevant and timely! I’ve used it with several individual students – they all loved it! I’ve even become a patron not only to have extra worksheets but also to express my gratitude for your work! Thanks a lot!
That’s so great! It’s super important for us to hear that our lesson plans work with students all over the world. And thank you very much for your support on Patreon.
Thanks for sharing your awesome job!
Thanks and enjoy 🙂
Thank you so much guys.Fabulous lesson! Relevant, thought provoking topic and questions, great range of vocabulary, excellent exercises – my students were 100% engaged and thoroughly enjoyed the lesson. I’m going to become a patron today.
Theresa, thank you! Have fun exploring our premium content!
I think this came out a few months too late.
That Bill Gates interview is from 2015 and I think he has been talking about the threat of a pandemic for around 10 years. I guess now he has the biggest “I told you so” moment this century. Probably he ain’t so happy about it, though.
Amazing! Thank you for the material! Super useful
Joanna, enjoy and thanks for the comment!
That’s amazing! Thank you so much for preparing the material.
Awesome! Great you like it!
What a great lesson! Thank you so much, guys!
Thanks Kate!
Get to know your students before you present this material. May cause conflicts in class if any one of your students believes in the conspiracy theories about Gates.
Well, that’s for sure but these people will get triggered just by hearing his name. Seriously though, I do hope that there aren’t too many people out there believing that Bill Gates cooked up the pandemic and now is spreading mind-controlling chips with the vaccine.
This is going to need a little update for actual experience now! LOL
Haha, you’re right! It turns out that now Bill Gates might not be the only person who’s worried about that particular thing.
MAGNIFICENT
Amazing work! Thank you for sharing.
We are super thankful for this well systematic lesson plan !
Thanks for the comment 🙂 We’re happy you like it!
Wow! How eerily prophetic that was.
This lesson worked extremely well. I felt like I was able to scaffold to reach intermediate to upper intermediate level as well. Thank you so much.
You’re right, it was actually 🙂 Thanks for taking the time to comment! It’s great to hear that you found the lesson so useful!