I. Brief Statements Based on the Unit
Have you experienced a terrible nature disaster? Certainly few of us have. Do you want to know something about it? Certainly many of us do. After you have learned this unit, Unit 10. Frightening nature, you are sure to obtain some useful information about that. The unit will be taught in four periods. In the first period, we'll deal with Warming up, Listening and Speaking. At the beginning, four pictures are shown to the students. They are asked to talk about them and then write down what is observed. The pictures are about geology, meteorology, astronomy and biology, including typhoon, cobra and cells. The pictures and the questions after them can greatly stimulate the students' interest in science. Listening is about weather
forecast in the USA. The exercises of listening can test how the students grasp the detailed information in it. Speaking provides all types of topics for the students to talk about. When they finish their talking, a lot of useful expressions on how to express emotion, anxiety and fear are mastered by them. In the second period, we'll deal with Prereading, Reading and Post-reading. In the beginning, the students will see and talk about three pictures about a famous volcano vesuvius, which once erupted about two thousand years ago, and destroyed two small towns. Then the
whole text gives us a vivid picture at that time. It describes how the writer’s uncle died. His uncle, attracted by the scene of volcano eruption, wanted to observe and record more about that. So he decided to go and see it from closer. He went there and rescued his friend's wife. Then he went to see another friend of his, who lived very near to the erupting volcano. He even encouraged the scared people to calm down. But unfortunately, he died at last. He only thought about learning more about volcano and wasn't afraid at all. He valued scientific knowledge more than his life. In the third period, we deal with Word study and a grammar item--Ellipsis. Plenty of exercises are arranged for it. The students will master it through practice. Integrating skills are delt with in the fourth period. The text is about a ship, controlled by the captain and his crew, fighting against a terrible typhoon. The story without end asks the students to use their imagination and write how it will end. We are sure that when the unit is finished, the students will not only improve their ability to listen, speak, read and write, but also learn and master plenty of useful words and expressions.
II. Teaching Goals
1. Talk about natural disasters volcanoes, hurricanes and typhoons.
2. Express emotion, anxiety and fear.
3. Learn about Ellipsis.
4. Practise creative writing.
III. Teaching Time: Four periods
IV. Background Information
1. Volcanoes
There are thousands of volcanoes all over the world. What makes volcanoes?
What happens?
The inside of the earth is very hot. Because it is very, very hot, the rock has melted like ice. It has become liquid, like water, his always boiling, like water in a kettle. If you have seen a kettle boiling, you know that the steam and boiling water try to get out. The very hot melted rock inside the earth also tries to get out. Usually it cannot because the outside of the earth is too thick and strong.
But in some places the outside of the earth is thin and weak. Sometimes a crack (a small opening) appears. The hot melted rock, which we call “lava”. pushes up
through the crack and bursts through. Steam and gas shoot up into the air and the hot melted lava pours out. Big pieces of rock may be thrown high into the air.
After a while the volcano becomes quiet again. The melted lava becomes hard. Later the same thing happens again and again. Each time more hot lava pours out on top of the cold lava and then becomes hard. In this way a kind of mountain is built up, with a hole down the middle. Perhaps the volcano will then be quiet and no more lava will burst out. Perhaps it will start again hundreds of years later.
Although there are thousands of volcanoes in the world, most of them are dead. Only about 500 sometimes start to throw out lava again. A famous volcano which is now dead is Mount Fujiyama in Japan. It is covered with snow in winter.
Vesuvius is the name of a very famous volcano in Italy. It first came to life many, many years ago. It was quiet for hundreds of years. Then in the year 79 it suddenly burst. A great cloud of smoke shot up into the sky with great burning rocks, which fell all around. Hot lava poured down its sides. About 3 000 people were killed.
This has happened again many times since that year. Sometimes no damage was
caused, or only little damage. But there was serious damage in the years 472,
1631, 1794, 1861, 1872 and 1906. You can see that a volcano can stay alive for many years. In 1906 part of the top of the mountain fell off. There was also serious damage in 1914 but there has not been any since that year.
2. What Is a Tornado?
What exactly is a tornado? The general picture is familiar enough. The phenomenon usually occurs on a hot. sticky day with south winds and an ominous sky. From the base of a thunderhead, a funnel-shaped cloud extends a violently twisting spout toward the earth. As it sucks in matter in its path, the twister may turn black, brown, or occasionally (over snow) even white. The moving cloud shows an almost continuous display of sheet lightning. It lurches along in a meandering path,
usually northeastward, at 25 to 40 miles per hour. Sometimes it picks up its finger from the earth for a short distance and then plants it down again. The funnel is very slender: its wake of violence averages about 400 yards wide. As the tornado approaches, it is heralded by a roar as of hundreds of jet planes or thousands of railroad cars. Its path is a path of total destruction. Buildings literally explode as they are sucked in by the tornado's low-pressure vortex (where the pressure drop
is as much as 10 percent) and by its powerful whirling winds (estimated at up to 500 miles per hour). The tornado's lifetime is as brief as it is violent. Within a few tens of miles (average: about 16 miles), it spends its force and suddenly disappears.
3. Earthquakes
Earthquake is a sudden, violent shaking of the earth's surface. It's a kind of crustal movement form of expression.
Earthquake is regarded as one of the most damaging forces known to man: since records began to be written down, it has been estimated that earthquake-related fatalities have been numbered in the millions, and that earthquake-related destruction has been beyond count.
The great majority of all earthquakes occur in two specific geographic areas. One such area surrounds the Pacific Ocean and its contiguous land masses. The other extends from the East India to the Atlas Mountains, including the Himalayas, Iran, Turkey, and the Alpine regions. It is in these two great belts or zones that ninety percent of all earthquakes take place. The text refers to two of the strongest quakes in San Francisco. As to our country, a large number of earthquakes happened in North China and Northwest China. The powerful earthquake of Tang Shan happened in the city of Tang Shan, Hebei Province on July 28th, 1976, which caused more than 240 000 deaths and the whole city was destroyed.
Nowadays scientists know a little about earthquakes and they still cannot stop these disasters from happening. However, they can warn people who live in these areas by pre diction, in advance to take precautions against such disasters. A worldwide earthquake warning network is already in operation at present and is expected to make earthquake prediction several years ahead of time.
The First Period
Teaching Aims:
1. Learn the new words of this period and master their usages.
2. Listen to a passage about weather forecast,
3. Talk about natural disasters.
Teaching Important Points:
1. How to improve the students' listening ability.
2. How to improve the students' speaking ability.
Teaching Difficult Point:
How to use what the students have learned to describe a nature disaster.
Teaching Methods:
1. Listening to improve the students' ability to listen.
2. Discussion and free talk to get every student to speak.
3. Talking the interesting topics to raise the students' interest in science.
Teaching Aids:
1. a computer
2. a projector
3. a tape recorder
Teaching Procedures
Step I Greetings and Revision
Greet the whole class as usual.
T: Have you finished your homework?
(Ss: Yes )Please put your exercise books on your desks. I'll check your homework.… (After teacher checks the students’ homework, teacher says the following. )
T: Open your books at Page 113. Let's learn the new words of this period first. SA, read the new words, please.
SA:…
(Teacher corrects the students' mistakes in pronunciation and gives the brief explanations of some words when necessary.)
Step II Warming up
T: Please open your books at Page 73.Look at the four pictures. What can you see in the pictures? Have a discussion with your partner and do the exercises. Some minutes later, I'll ask some of you to give the answers.
(Teacher goes among the class and join in the students' discussion. Some minutes later, teacher says the following. )
T: Have you finished?
Ss: Yes.
T: Let's do Ex. 1. Who will talk about the first picture?
S: Perhaps the first picture is a geomorphologic map.
T: Please go on !
SB: In the second picture we can see a scene in which some tall trees are blown down. Perhaps a typhoon has just happened. What a sad scene! If we want to get more information, we can see pictures taken by the satellite on the Internet.
Sc: In the third picture. I saw a comet. It has a very bright head and a long less
bright tail and is moving through the sky to the ground. If we want to see it
more clearly, we can see it through a telescope.
T: How do you know when it will happen?
SD: The TV programme will tell us in advance. It will tell us its detailed timetable and the other information about it.
SE: In the last picture we can see a cell, but it is enlarged many times. We often see cells in our biology classes. As long as you have a microscope, you can see them clearly.
T: Do you often hear about these things in newspapers or on TV?
SF: Both. In summer we often hear about typhoons on the Pacific. There are about seven typhoons in the southeast of our country. If there are fewer, drought will take place.
SG: Some years ago, we learned from the newspaper and TV that a comet would pass through the dark sky in our country. Our geography teacher organized us to watch it through a microscope.
T: Now answer the third question, please. How does nature form a danger to people in the world and how can science help reduce that threat?
SH: Typhoons are harmful to us. They can pull up the tall tree, blow down the wire poles and even destroy people's houses. Sometimes it can cause severe flood.
SI: Earthquake can bring great damage to people's life. It can cut off electricity
and water supply and destroy houses. Even it often causes deaths. In 1976 a terrible earthquake in Tang Shan killed thousands of people.
SJ: If the typhoon and earthquake can be forecast, damages will greatly be reduced. Scientists in our country can forecast typhoons exactly and some of the earthquakes have been forecast before. I’m sure they will control the natural disaster and reduce the losses to the lowest degree.
T: In which ways are the fields of science important to our everyday life?
SK: Geograph is important. If we do well in it, we can find more coal, gas and oil, as well as all kinds of metal.
SL: Meteorology is important. If we master it, we can tell our farmers much information about farming. If so, they will increase their productivity and
avoid losses.
SM: In our geograph lessons, our teacher told us that the stars and planets in
the universe have effects on the earth, especially the weather on the earth. So we should learn astronomy well and know as much about it as possible so
that we can forecast their effect.
SN: Biology is an important subject. It affects our everyday life directly. If we
develop better medicine, some diseases will be got rid of. SARS,for example,
broke out in our country last year. We needed a lot of effective medicine
then. If it had not been for the success our scientists achieved, we would have
had much more losses.
T: OK. Let's stop here. Knowledge is power. Let's work hard at our subjects and lay a solid foundation for the future. I wish all of you a bright future.
Step III Listening
T: Now let's do listening. Please turn to Page 73 and 7L Read the information about the exercises. (After a few minutes.)
T: Do you understand what we should do?
Ss: Yes.
T: OK. Let's listen to the tape. I'll play the tape three times. When I play it for
the first time, try to get as much information as possible and write it down on a piece of paper. When 1 play it for a second time, check your answers to be sure they are correct. Then check your answers with your partner and have a discussion with them. At last, I'll play it for the third time and answer all the questions you are not sure about. Are you clear about that?
Ss: Yes.
T: OK. Let's begin.
……
Step IV Speaking
T: Let's go on to do speaking. Please open your books at Page 74. Read the dialogue first and then talk about typhoon with your partner. A few minutes later, let’s act it out.
Sample dialogue
(A: Student a; B: Student b)
A: Are there any typhoons in the area where you live?
B: No, there aren't.
A: Have you heard about it?
B: Yes, I have. I saw a VCD about typhoon last year, and I learned something from it.
A: What is it like?
B: Very terrible! When it happens, trees are pulled up and some old houses are
destroyed.
A: Is that so? I wish there were no typhoons in the world.
B: That's impossible. But when it comes, there will be rain with it.
A: How about hurricane and tornado?
B: There are many words for a violent tropical circular wind. A cyclone may be very large, bringing rain and great destruction. When it happens in the western Atlantic Ocean, it is called a hurricane, and the same tiling happening in tile western Pacific or China sea is a typhoon. When shaped like a pipe and passing in a narrow path, it is a tornado if it goes over land and a waterspout if it goes over water.
A: I see. Thank you very much for telling me so much.
B: Not at all.
T: (Show the screen.) Have you met with one of such situations above? Are you
frightened? Have you heard anyone meet with that? Describe how they behaved then. Have a discussion with your partner and make up a dialogue. The useful expressions on the blackboard may be a help to you.
(Teacher writes the useful expressions on Page 75 on the blackboard.)
Sample dialogue:
(A: Students c ; B: Student d)
A: Have you been in a situation that frightens you?
B: Yes. It was last summer. I spent my summer vacation in my hometown, a small village in a mountainous district. One day, I went hiking with my cousin. On our way home, we met a cobra.
A: Were you frightened when you saw it?
B: Very! It made my hair stand on end. My cousin was too frightened to move at that time, too. Because we both saw on TV that the poison of a cobra can kill a person easily.
A: What happened next?
B: Fortunately it didn't see us. We acted just as the TV programme told us. At
last, it went by. The distance between the cobra and us was only three metres or so.
A: How terrible !
Step V Summary and Homework
T: In this period, we've talked about some topics about geology, meteorology, astronomy and biology, and listened to a passage about weather information.
Also we've had a discussion about some frightening situations. After class, go on with the discussion according to the pictures on Page 25 using the useful expressions on the blackboard. (Teacher reads the expressions.) And do the fifth part of Warming up. That's all for today. Class is over.
Step VI The Design of the Writing on the Blackboard
Unit 10 Frightening nature
The First Period
Useful expressions :
How terrible!
It makes me feel uneasy when…
I think it's very unpleasant…
It makes me feel very worried.
I get very upset.
It's a frightening thing…
I dare not …
I'm really frightened to…
What's really scary…
I'm afraid of…
I'm frightened to death by…
She's scared to death.
He gets into a total panic when…
It makes my hair stand on end.
What terrifies me…
Step VII Record after Teaching