TeachingEnglish | Lesson plans
These five additional activities can be used in conjunction with the main
lesson plan for the Odyssey 2050 project.
Additional activity 1: ‘vocabulary brainstorm’
 Write ‘climate change’ and below this ‘act now’ in the centre of the
board.
Climate change
‘act now’

Put the students in pairs/small groups.

Tell the pairs to write down on a piece of paper as many words or ideas
connected with global warming that they can think of in 2 minutes.

At the end of the time, students count the number of words they have
written down.

The students with the highest number of lexical items read out their
ideas and the teacher writes them on the board. Other students
look/listen and add any further vocabulary.
Note: at this stage, it is not necessary to teach any new vocabulary as this is
to further activate the learners existing schemata in relation to the film topic. If
the task proves difficult, help by writing some questions around the word
bubble to help stimulate ideas:
What can we do?
Climate change
‘act now’
What is the cause?
Additional activity 2: Peer correction
 Before checking the answers you could ask individuals/groups to move
to another students place/ timeline and watch the film for a second time
and check whether their classmates have the correct/same order as
them. This might be particularly useful for weaker groups. Following
this peer correction, conduct whole class feedback on the correct order.

An additional way of checking the timeline of the film events would be
to give 9 students one event slip each and they then have to stand in
the correct order. The rest of the class waits until they have stopped
moving and check to see if the timeline looks correct. Learners may like
to repeat this line-up activity a few times with different students
moving/checking.
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TeachingEnglish | Lesson plans
Additional activity 3: Eyewitness
Students are encouraged to interpret and review the film clip they have just
seen.

Put students into small groups (3-4 people).

Ask the class the following general questions which they briefly discuss
in their groups:
1. How many humans were talking in the film? (answer: 1 Dr Diaz)
2. Where does the story (plot) take place? (answer: on a
spaceship/spacecraft/UFO)
3. How many different aliens did you see? (answer: 4, with each one
the class lists the teacher may wish to stick up the pictures on the
board see Worksheet 2)
4. Which alien did you like the best? Why?
5. What year is it in the film?(answer 2050)
6. Were the aliens happy or unhappy about humans? Why? (answer:
unhappy but hopeful at the end that they can change)
These focus questions are to give students ideas about the kind of
information they need to include in their group’s summary of the film.
The questions and time given for discussing the answers to each one
should be quite brief.

Learners are then asked to write a short group ‘Eyewitness report’
about the film trailer where they write a brief summary of the Odyssey
2050 clip on Worksheet 3. The teacher should monitor and provide
assistance where necessary. Group writing can help students share
their individual interpretations and draw on group strengths.

Learners swap their accounts with another group who read through the
report than write comments at the bottom. The reports are then given
back to the original group. The teacher can select one of these reports
(perhaps the one awarded the highest points) to be read out loud. This
type of peer marking helps students to think about the differences
between effective and ineffective writing.
This activity is adapted from Stempleski and Tomalin, ‘Film’, Oxford
University Press, 2001, pgs 38 – 40
Additional activity 4: Dictionary skills
 Give each pair or small group a dictionary.

Encourage the learners to check the meaning of any words/ phrases
they are unsure of in Worksheet 3.

The teacher should monitor carefully and provide help or clarification
where needed. During monitoring the teacher should note down which
words students are finding particularly difficult
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TeachingEnglish | Lesson plans

Based on monitoring conduct general class feedback on any
challenging lexical items and ask concept checking questions to ensure
understanding.
Additional activity 5: Film commentary
 Put students in pairs, student A/B.

Student A turns their back to the screen/TV which shows the film trailer.
Student B faces the screen. Tell the students: ‘You will tell your partner
what is happening and what is being said’. ‘You do not have to say
exactly the same words as the aliens, as long as you keep speaking
and describing’

Play the video with no sound.

Student B describes what they can see.

After about 1 min shout ‘swap’, the students swap places and then
student A describes what they can see to student B. Keep telling the
students to swap places every minute or so until the end of the film.
Note: this is a light-hearted and fun activity, which is often very popular with
teen learners. It works best if you model it for the class with another student
first. As well as a commentary, they can also make sound effects e.g. whoosh
or their own opinions e.g. this is my favourite part. With weaker students the
rate of swapping places might need to be higher e.g. every 30 seconds to
make the task more manageable. During the exercise the teacher can
monitor and at the end give feedback on some of the good language you
heard or good effort the students made etc.
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© BBC | British Council 2010