What if it had never been invented?

Inna | Jan 06, 2025Dec 27, 2024

LESSON OVERVIEW

The main objectives of this lesson are to:

• discuss inventions and their influence on people’s lives and the world;
• practise conditional structures;
• watch parts of two videos on relevant inventions.

Students discuss the impact of inventions with this lesson. They watch two parts of a videos (4.5 minutes in total) on important inventions (e.g. plumbing, printing press) and on groundbreaking failures that shaped the world. Students also review conditional structures (second conditional, third conditional, mixed conditionals) and speculate about alternative outcomes and scenarios to technological advances (ChatGPT and electric cars).

WARM-UP AND CONDITIONAL STRUCTURES

This lesson starts with a warm-up. Students discuss inventions and their usefulness. After that, they rank inventions (e.g. refrigerator, compass, plumbing, etc.) from the least to most important. Students watch part of a video (to 02:35) and check their ideas. Then, they watch it again and match the beginning with the correct ending of sentences about inventions. Following that, students look again at the sentences and practise conditional structures (including mixed conditionals). They match the sentences with conditional forms and their uses. Afterwards, students complete statements about other inventions (e.g. penicillin, engine, telephone, etc.) using verbs in the correct form. 

VIDEO AND DISCUSSION

In this part of the lesson, students watch part of a second video (to 01:59) on failed inventions that changed the world. They correct statements about the video. Afterwards, students complete sentences based on the story from the video using their own ideas and conditional structures (e.g. If Douglas Engelbart hadn’t invented the computer mouse…). Then, they read stories about some famous inventions (wireless electricity transmission and the World Wide Web). Then, students practise conditional structures and answer questions on the inventions and their creators. Finally, in pairs, they create questions based on texts about ChatGPT and electric cars using different conditional structures. Then, students ask the questions to their partner and answer their questions.  

HOMEWORK/REVISION

This lesson plan also includes an additional task that you can use as homework or revision. In the task, students rewrite sentences using conditional structures. They also add one more sentence using a conditional structure. The task is available in the teacher’s version of the worksheet. You can print it and hand it out to your students. It’s also included in the e-lesson plan.

WORKSHEETS

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