S1E26 - The Night Before

Objective & content

The episode has three scenes on the evening before the Gala. Rodrigo visits his son Tiago in the pool house and tells him that his grandfather is going to move to a care home. Harper and her mother Bunny get ready at home, and Harper says she is going alone. On the pier, Stella is nervous about her performance while Neil sells her a limousine package and T-shirts. The main grammar point is going to for plans and predictions ("It's going to be legendary"), with vocabulary about feelings and events. The skill is listening for gist, then for feelings and detail.

Pedagogical guide

The 45-minute lesson for 4e (A2+) follows the three scenes. Scene 1 is about a grandfather with memory problems, so the plan asks you to stay calm and never ask students for personal stories. The jokes in scene 3 give a light way into the grammar.

Suggested procedure

1. (4 min) Activate prior knowledge: what you do and feel the night before a big event.
2. (4 min) Vocabulary preview: awful, annoying, disaster, legendary, competitive, microphone.
3. (5 min) First listen for the main topic.
4. (7 min) Second listen with three pauses: Tiago's feelings, "So it's all been for nothing", Neil's plan.
5. (6 min) Comprehension check with five questions.
6. (5 min) Vocabulary matching game and one sentence per student.
7. (6 min) Grammar focus on going to from three lines of the script, then two sentences about the weekend.
8. (5 min) Pair speaking: a nervous singer and a friend who encourages.
9. (3 min, optional) Write four sentences with going to.

Materials & prerequisites

• Lesson plan, student sheet and teacher sheet (PDF)
• Audio or the Academy app, board or projector, six blank paper strips per pair
• Prerequisite grammar: the present simple and the verb be

Curriculum alignment

Cycle 4, class 4e (axis: school and society, `c4-school-and-society`).