Lesson Planning

Country Comparison Lesson Plan

Audiences: California Community College level 5/6 (lower intermediate) ESL students from a variety of countries and language groups.

Materials:

One computer connected to the Internet for every student.
LCD projector and screen
Country Comparison Grid Sheet (download a Word 2000 doc) (view)

Time: 3 hours (probably over the course of two classes)

Introduction

If teacher feels it is necessary, he or she can do a review of the superlative and comparative forms of adjectives. This can be done using online resources (see the class site for more information).

Teacher and students discuss the United States and go over new vocabulary. Teacher poses questions to the class:

How big do you think the United States is?
What’s the population of the U.S.?
What are the major religions in the U.S.?
What’s the average life expectancy in the U.S.?
Etc.

Class and teacher then go to the ABC News Country Profiles site. Teacher or student volunteer demonstrates how to navigate the site and gather the necessary geographical information to answer the questions.

Practice

Class then brainstorms for all the different countries represented in the classroom. They then fill in the country names in Country Comparison Grid Sheet. The sheet has the countries in the cells down the far left column and the different information to be compared in the cells across the top row. Students work in pairs to formulate the question they would have to ask to get the information they need on the grid. As a class students fill in the grid for the United States.

Use

Students break into groups of 3 (preferably from different language groups). Students divide up the countries and collect the information they need from the ABC News Country Profiles site. Students interview each other and fill in the information in the grid that their partners supply.

Groups work together to write comparative and superlatives sentences about the countries in the class. Students present their sentences to the class. Class discusses what they have learned.

Now let's create the final step in our lesson, a Web site that has all the links the students need for the lesson. How do you create a daily class Web site?