The document provides a unit plan for a lesson on natural disasters for secondary school students. The plan aims to develop students' communicative competence through interpreting texts and discussing past events related to natural disasters. Specifically, students will practice using the past simple and past continuous tenses to talk about past states, events, and actions interrupted by other actions. The lesson involves various tasks like labeling disaster pictures, reading witness accounts, filling in verb tenses, and retelling experiences of natural disasters to classmates. Students will compare two accounts and discuss which disaster was worse.

1. ICT in English Teaching – Prof. Ledesma, Paula
Students: Cáceres Laura, Fernádez Patricia and Palladino Luciana.
UNIT PLAN
Course: 2nd or 3rd year at secondary school.
Level: Elementary
Topic: Natural Disasters
Global communicative objectives
During the development of the project, students will develop, with a degree of communicative
competence in accordance to their level, the ability and knowledge necessary to:
• Interpret different types of texts about the topic to discuss them.
• Give information about past events in progress.
• Give information about what was happening when something else happened.
• Compare/contrast two natural disasters.
• Retell a witness account of a natural disaster and discuss it.
Specific Linguistic Objectives
During the unit, in order to achieve the global communicative objectives specified above, students will
develop their knowledge of:
• Past simple tense of BE, regular and irregular verbs to talk about past states and events related to
the topic. (recycled)
• Past continuous tense to talk about past events in progress. (new)
• Past continuous tense to talk about an action happening in the past when another action
interrupted it. (new)
• Comparative adjectives, regular and irregular to describe two different situations (recycled).
• Vocabulary related to natural disasters such as: earthquake, hail, shaking, rocking, crack,
terrifying, rescue, evacuate
Class/es development:
Activation: T will pin up a poster of natural disasters (which already has the labels) on the bb. T’ll ask
Ss what they call them in Spanish and we’ll read the names in the labels. T will ask Ss why natural
disasters are becoming more and more frequent (cross curricular content). T will tell Ss they’ll read
accounts of people who have experienced some of these situations, that is witnesses, and that by the
end of the unit of work, in pairs, each of the member of the pair of Ss will have to read a witness account
different from his/her mate and retell/discuss the experience to each other.
Mini task: T will hand out a copy with pictures of different natural disasters for students to label them.
E…………………. F…………. T……………….. T…………….. H………….

2. Task 1:
I’ll hand out the following article and ask Ss what kind of text it is and where it is from . Ss will try to
infer from the title what the article is about. I’ll write their predictions on the bb.
Ss read the text. After reading, predictions will be checked.
Source:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0118_050118_tsunami_geography_lesson.html
Adapted from:
Myers, C., Jackson, S., Lynam, D., & Tiberio, S. (2007). What’s up 2. Pearson Longman.
Task 1.a.: To check comprehension, Ss will solve the quiz prepared with the Hot Potatoes Quiz
application.
Systematization Past Continuous vs Simple Past.
Task 2:
Read the following witnessess’ statements. Which natural disaster do they refer to?
Ss will do a matching activity created with the Hot Potatoes Match application.
Task 3: Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the verbs in brackets. (done with the Hot Potatoes
Cloze application).
Task 4: Ss scan over the text. T will elicit from them what the purpose of the text is (expected answer: to
describe an earthquake) and who writes this description (expected answer: Vera Johnson) . Specific
vocabulary is made salient. Ss read the text and then do two activities.

3. “It was about 11.30 am and I was shopping with my friend. Suddenly, there was
a strange noise and then I felt that the ground was shaking.
My friend was trembling. The tremor was getting worse so we started to run.
The buildings were rocking from side to side and the roads and walls were cracking.
There was smashed glass everywhere. I was so scared! Everybody was screaming
and crying. It was a terrifying experience!”
Vera Johnson (38), Paso Robles, California.
Source:
Dooley, J., Evans, V. (2005). Blockbuster 2. Express Publishing.
Task 4a: S will solve the crossword done with the Hot Potatoes Cross application.
Task 4b: Reading comprehension exercise.
Task 5: Put the words in order to form sentences. (done with the Hot Potatoes Mix application)
Task 6: : T will tell Ss they are going to read the experience of two people who were witnesses of a
natural disaster and then retell it to his/her mate and discuss which one was worse. Each member of the
group will have a different piece of information and a table to complete with information of the two
pieces of news so that there is a purpose for listening. T will hand out the articles below and ask Ss what
type of text they are, where they are from and predictions of the content will be made and checked.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8541237.stm (adapted)
STUDENT A
Read the news below, complete part of the table and retell Charlotte’s experience to your
classmate. Then listen to your mate to find out the missing information in the table, discuss which
one was worse.

4. WITNESS DISASTER CITY TIME DURATION WHAT WAS SHE/ WHAT WAS
HE DOING? HAPPENING?
Charlotte
Peter
STUDENT B
Read the news below, complete part of the table and retell Peter’s experience to your classmate.
Then listen to your mate to find out the missing information in the table, discuss which one was
worse
WITNESS DISASTER CITY TIME DURATION WHAT WAS SHE/ WHAT WAS
HE DOING? HAPPENING?
Charlotte
Peter