June 7

What a planker!

Here’s a fun lesson plan for teens which gets their creative juices flowing and includes authentic listening from the other side of the globe.

To begin, show your students the following pictures, which can be found on facebook’s Planking Community page, and ask them what they think the person is doing.  My students came up with some great ideas, as you can see from their comments below…

PlankingThen explain to them what planking is…if you’re not sure yourself, check out the video below.


Show the video to the students, then ask them to watch again and answer the first four questions on the handout, which can be found on my Activities for your Classroom page.  Correct the handout and discuss the next three questions, before asking students to do the gapfill activity, adapted from a BBC news article, at the bottom.  You can then show them a second video of the news report following the young man’s death.  I think it’s important to see both the fun side of the activity and also the dangers, I certainly wouldn’t want to encourage students to try stunts like these.

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Posted June 7, 2011 by Teresa Bestwick in category Resources

6 thoughts on “What a planker!

  1. danielle

    super!

    I actually saw some picture like this a while ago and was wondering how I might be able to use them in lessons.

    I was thinking about prepositions of place (she’s lying ON the roof, they’re lying UNDER the car, etc) but your activities look way more exciting! I look forward to trying them out at summer school this year.

    by the way, there’s also a group called “the lying down game” (http://www.lyingdowngame.net/ or https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5989617014) … in case you should ever run out of photos!

    cheers!

    Reply
    1. Teresa Bestwick (Post author)

      Thanks for your message, Danielle. I think there’s actualy a bit of a rivality between “Plankers” and people who play the Lying Down Game. I think using the pictures to elicit some prepostions is also a good idea, although I imagine there to be lots of “He’s lying ON…”!

      Reply
    1. Teresa Bestwick (Post author)

      Great Powerpoint, Michelle! Glad you were able to use the videos – did anybody try planking in the classroom? One of mine tried to plank on a dictionary!

      Reply
  2. Marisol

    Hey Teresa! My colleague Guido introduced us to your page and planking lesson ideas in a staff meeting and I’ve got to say they are excellent for summer school! I’ve done it with almost every class I have, and whilst some of them think it’s stupid, most of them really get into it!

    Thanks for the great ideas!!

    Reply

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