Will there be another pandemic in your lifetime?
Lesson plan overview
This B2-level worksheet provides an engaging, educational resource for students to learn about pandemics, infectious diseases, and global health issues.They learn essential vocabulary and talk about symptoms, treatment and vaccination. Other health-related lessons that you might find interesting are: “Flu season essentials“, “First aid“, “What happens to your brain when you have a concussion?”, “Phrasal verbs: health”, and “Idioms: health“.
Speaking: The lesson starts with a few conversation questions about pandemics and common diseases (smallpox, hepatitis, tetanus). Students share what they know about each one, talk about vaccination and other public health achievements.
Vocabulary: Students learn common symptoms (e.g. rash, swollen glands, fever) and use them to describe the diseases from activity one, or other diseases. In the next activity, students learn about viruses and complete the sentences with useful vocabulary (e.g. spread, outbreak, strain, epidemic). Then, they discuss a few questions to activate the vocabulary.
Spread Prevention Strategies: Activities categorize individual versus systemic actions to prevent disease spread, such as handwashing, vaccination, quarantine, and improving sanitation. Students discuss which measures are most effective for stopping or slowing a pandemic.
Listening: Students watch a TEDEd video called “Will there be another pandemic in your lifetime?”. Exercises include answering comprehension questions, analyzing pandemic risks, and identifying strategies that reduced the impact of outbreaks.
Speaking & Debate: Students engage in group discussions and debates, weighing investments in pandemic prevention versus current health crises. They propose funding strategies, and justify their choices while developing critical thinking and debating skills.
The set of conversation cards is a great way to review the target vocabulary of this lesson as well as to teach a conversation class. The Interactive PDF will make it easy to teach this lesson in an online setting.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
Pre-class activities
All video-based ESL lesson plans include online pre-class activities, which are FREE and can be completed without registration. Perfect for teachers who wish to embrace the blended learning approach. By providing students with resources and engagement opportunities before the actual class session, educators can foster active participation, enhance comprehension, and optimise in-class discussions.
The pre-class activities are optional: if you choose not to assign them, or your students don’t complete them, it will not disturb the flow of the class. You can find and review the pre-class activities for this lesson plan here:
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In-class activities
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Additional resources
Each video-based lesson plan includes links to additional resources (videos and articles), which are FREE can be found online (in the pre-class activities page. These links aim to extend the learning experience, enabling students to connect classroom knowledge with real-world applications.
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Teacher’s lesson plan
Student’s worksheet
Student’s interactive PDF
Conversation cards PDF
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