earthquake

Teaching content: Unit 4, Book 1 Teaching aims:

1． Train students’reading ability .

2． Help students learn some ways to deal with the situation before an earthquake, during an earthquake or after an earthquake.

Teaching difficulties: It seems that there are some new words and phrases. Such as

pipe, burst, canal, steam, suffering, extreme, injury, brick, dam, trap, electricity, bury, shelter, dig out etc.

Teaching aids: Make PPT for the class and find some pictures. Teaching procedures:

Step 1: warming-up（4 minutes）

1. Show two pictures to the students. The First one is about Tangshan. The second is about San Francisco.

2. Many people believe that “It is always calm before a storm”, so what do you think will happen before an earthquake?

3. Four pictures about the strange signs which would happen before an earthquake.

Step 2：Presentation (1 minute)

Let the students see three pictures. The first picture gives us an image of Tangshan before the earthquake. The second shows us an image of Tangshan during the earthquake. The third is the new look of Tangshan 30 years later. Step3: Reading (25 minutes)

1. Get the students to read the whole text no more than 5 minutes. Then catch the main idea of the passage.

2. Ask the students to conclude the structure of the passage. Then I am going to analyze the structure of this passage to them.

3. Read the text more carefully and answer some detailed questions.

1. Can you list anything strange before the Tangshan earthquake? ○

2. What happened during the earthquake? ○

3. What effects did the big earthquake bring to Tangshan? ○

4. How did the army help people in Tangshan? ○

4. Answers for the first question 1. The water in the wells rose and fell. 2. A smelly gas came out of the cracks.

3. The chickens and even the pigswere too nervous to eat. 4. Mice run out of the fieldslooking for places to hide. 5. Fish jumped out of their bowls and ponds. 6. Some people saw bright lights in the sky. 7. The water pipescracked and burst. 5. Answers for the second question

1. A huge crackcut across houses, roads andcanals. 2. Steam burst from holes in the ground. 3. Hard hills of rock became rivers of dirt. 4. A large city lay in ruins.

5. Thesuffering of the people was extreme.

Two –thirds of them died orinjured during the earthquake.

Thousands of familieswere killed and many children were left without parents.

6. Answers for the third question

2. Two dams and most fridges fell.

5. Sand now filled thewells.

1.Bricks covered the ground like autumn leaves.

3. The railway track was now useless pieces of steel. 4. Half a million pigs and millions of chickens were dead.

6. Water, food andelectricity were hard to get. 10. Answers for the fourth question

1. The army organized teams to dig out those who were trapped and to bury those who were trapped.

2. Miners were rescued from the coal mines.

3. Shelters were built for survivors whose homes had been destroyed. 4. Fresh water was taken to the city. Step 4: Practice (14 minutes)

1. SLIDE 7 Complete the passage with words from the text. Then I will choose someone of you to tell us your answers.

It was a frightening night. The dam cracked and then burst under the weight of the water. The water went all over the fields and destroyed quite a few villages along the river. Some buildings were in ruins and some farmers were trapped at the top of their houses. The water filled the cannels and the farmyard. Dead bodies and injured animals were seen everywhere. People were shocked, but they had to bury the dead bodies for health reasons. It was a very sad time.

2. Work in groups to talk about what we shall do if an earthquake happens. Then select one of your team members to share your solutions.

3. Ask the students about what they can do to help those people who are in the trouble of an earthquake.

Step 5: Teaching conclusion (1 minute)

Earthquakes have the capability of striking fear in the heart of even the most courageous of individuals. The sudden, unpredictability and lack of control are the types of mysterious qualities that make earthquakes a thing of dread. So I hope from this class, you have learnt some basic ways to protect yourself when the earthquake happens. Besides you can surf the internet to get more information about how to take action to protect yourselves when an earthquake suddenly take place. Step 6: Homework assignments:

1. Homework for today is exercise 1 of the workbook.

2. After class, you can surf the internet for more information about the earthquake which happened in Tangshan or Wenchuan.