The First Plane

Objective & content

Two friends talk about the first plane: one friend explains, the other asks. The episode follows Wilbur and Orville Wright from a toy helicopter and their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, to their gliders and the wind and sand hills of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, then to the Flyer, their plane with an engine, and its twelve-second flight on December 17th, 1903. It ends with the brothers famous and rich, millions of people flying every day, and a piece of the Flyer on Mars in 2021. The story is told in the past simple (opened, watched, built, flew, won), with was and were, there were, did questions ("Where did the pilot sit?") and didn't, and words are defined in the present simple (a glider is, the wind carries it). Learners listen for the places, the numbers and the dates, then answer the quiz in the app and the one-page pupil sheet.

Pedagogical guide

The 45-minute lesson plan starts from a drawing of a bird and a plane: what can fly? Learners preview eight words about planes and flight, listen twice (once for who made the first plane, once with four pauses for questions), then check the facts, practice the vocabulary, sort sentences into "today" and "a long time ago" to notice the past simple, and ask and answer questions about the first plane in pairs. At A1+ learners form simple past simple questions themselves ("How long did it fly?") and answer briefly ("Twelve seconds."). Most activities have a support path and a stretch path.

Suggested procedure

1. Activate knowledge (3 min): draw a bird and a plane, and ask what can fly.
2. Vocabulary preview (5 min): plane, pilot, bicycle shop, glider, engine, wing, toss a coin, flight.
3. First listen (5 min): play the whole episode (about three and a half minutes) and ask who made the first plane and how long it flew.
4. Second listen (12 min): pause four times to ask about the toy, the bicycle shop and Kitty Hawk, the pilot and the coin toss, the first flight, and the brothers' later flights, then about Mars at the end.
5. Comprehension check (5 min): the Facts part of the pupil sheet (questions 1 to 6, as in the app quiz).
6. Vocabulary practice (5 min): the Vocabulary part (questions 7 to 12).
7. Grammar focus (5 min): sort the episode's sentences into "today" and "a long time ago", match past forms to their base verbs (build and built, fly and flew, win and won), then the Grammar part (questions 13 to 18).
8. Speaking (5 min): in pairs, students ask and answer the episode's questions about the first plane.

Materials & prerequisites

• The episode in the app, with its quiz.
• The one-page pupil sheet (18 items: facts, vocabulary, grammar) and its answer key, in the episode's printables.
• Prerequisites: the present simple, and years and big numbers in English.