LESSON OVERVIEW

With this lesson plan on global problems students will learn some advanced language (adjectives and verbs) to talk about the world’s issues. They’ll also watch a video about reducing food insecurity and discuss solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.

WARM-UP & VOCABULARY

The warm-up activity starts with five questions about the world’s problems with five highlighted adjectives, which students need to match to  correct meanings (e.g. urgent – pressing, never-ending – chronic). Then, they focus on a list of the world’s most pressing issues and decide which two are the most dire and the most pervasive, justifying their opinions and adding more issues to the list. The following task presents a set of six gapped sentences describing global problems which need to be completed with six verbs (e.g. eradicate, plague). Students then put the new language into practice through a discussion in which they relate the world problems to their own countries.  

VIDEO & SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL PROBLEMS

Before students watch a video about an innovative idea deployed in several US cities, they look at a related slogan and try to guess what the idea might be about. Then, they watch the video and focus on finding the answers to five specific questions. The listening practice is followed by a vocabulary exercise in which students analyse five extracts from the video and explain the meaning of the words and phrases in bold. Then, students exchange their views on the idea presented in the video. In the final stage of this lesson on global problems, the definition of ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’ is introduced and students speculate about their role in tackling the world’s problems in the future. Working in groups, students choose one of the objectives from the list of issues presented earlier and discuss how a multi-stakeholder partnership could approach it. Using a set of questions as a guide, they pitch their ideas to other groups.

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