LESSON OVERVIEW

In this ESL lesson about history, students watch a stand-up comedy piece, talk about history and learn useful vocabulary.

VOCABULARY & VIDEO

This ESL lesson about history starts with an optional warm-up activity in which students discuss some questions about history. Then, they need to match halves to create sentences. The sentences contain the target vocabulary for the lesson (e.g. cultural heritage, make amends, artefacts, loot). Then, students choose two of the statements and elaborate on them. Students should ask follow-up questions to what their partner says. Next, students complete a list of tasks which all include the target vocabulary (e.g. Name an event considered historic for your country.). Finally, students watch the video for the first time and explain what they think about it using some prompts. The prompts refer to the difficulty of the video and the humour in it. 

DISCUSSION & IDIOMS

After the video, students read some information about the British Museum which the comedian talked about. The teacher can choose to show students some photos and more information available in the provided link. Students discuss several questions referring to some of the artefacts in the British Museum. Then, they watch the video for the second time and pay attention to four idioms the comedian uses (e.g. not have a leg to stand on, right a wrong). They need to explain what the idioms mean. After that, they practise using the idioms in a short activity. In the activity, they need to react to different situations. The teacher can also ask students to come up with more situations for the teacher to react using the idioms. In the last part of this ESL lesson about history, students look at two comments about history and decide what they would say in support or against them. They need to use some of the language from the lesson.

There is also a link in the teacher’s version of the worksheet to a short video which the teacher can use to supplement the lesson. The video contains some arguments not discussed in the lesson.