Space, Part 2: Life in Space

Objective & content

Two friends talk about life on the International Space Station: a big home in space, about two hundred fifty miles (four hundred kilometers) up and about as big as a football field, where astronauts from America and other countries live, usually for six months. The friends follow the astronauts' day: training in a giant swimming pool in Houston, Texas, the spacesuit for the dangerous world outside, sleeping in a bag on the wall, food in packets, a toilet that works like a vacuum cleaner, no showers, two hours of exercise and the view of the Earth. Daily life on the station is told in the present simple (they sleep, food comes in packets, the station goes around the Earth), with don't (they don't float away), there's no and there isn't (there's no air), as ... as (as heavy as two grown-ups), a comparative (much farther), can (What can they see?) and questions (Where do astronauts sleep?). One past simple, "The first astronauts arrived in 2000.", is for learners to recognize rather than produce. Learners listen for the numbers and the astronauts' routines, then answer the quiz in the app.

Materials & prerequisites

• The episode in the app, with its quiz.
• Prerequisites: present simple (with the -s for one person or thing), there is / there's no, can, and big numbers in English.

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c3-child-and-wider-environment and people-and-characters, so it fits cycle 3 (6e) and the 6e axis People and characters ("Personnes et personnages"). It also fits the daily routine and USA topics of German Klasse 6 and 7. The episode targets CEFR A1+.