The Midwest
Episode of the series Awesome Stuff
The episode
Cross America's flat, fertile middle — endless cornfields, tornado country, the Great Lakes, and Chicago's skyline rising out of the farmland.
Episode worksheets (2)
- Student sheet In your teacher account
- Teacher sheet In your teacher account
Teaching guide
Objective & content
Jeff guides listeners through the Midwest, twelve states in the middle of the map, and the episode pays off the pie promise from episode 3. They look at about 70 million people, the farms that grow more than 90% of America's corn, Tornado Alley with its basements and sirens, the Great Lakes, Chicago and the summer state fairs. Learners practise the present simple, quantities and percentages (more than 90%, a fifth of) and comparison with more than (more tornadoes than anywhere else), with vocabulary of farming, storms and food. The main skill is listening; one line to notice is "This region is not being humble."
Materials & prerequisites
- Student sheet and teacher sheet, each as a PDF and an HTML file (in the episode's printables).
- Learners should have heard episodes 1 and 3 (the regions, the pie joke), and know the present simple and numbers over a hundred.
Curriculum alignment
Tagged c3-child-and-wider-environment (cycle 3, 6e). The episode targets CEFR level A1+.
Possible adaptations
- Lower levels: Offer segmented listening and additional visual aids.
- Advanced levels: Encourage an oral summary and a debate in English on the theme.
- Large groups: Organise group work with differentiated roles.
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