Modulo 7: Global warming.

Objectives:

• Comprehend information about global warming trough different kind of texts.

• Identify which kind of text it is.

• Summarize the information and give an opinion about the topic.

Pre-reading:

• A presentation about global warming with pictures and short videos in power point.

http://www.glogster.com/glog.php?glog_id=12024109&scale=54&isprofile=true

• Questions and answers about the topic. For example: what do you understand about global warming?
Is it dangerous? What can you see in these pictures?
While reading:

• Text about global warming.

Global warming is a slow but steady rise in Earth's surface temperature. Temperatures today are 0.74 °C
higher than 150 years ago. Some people think that the warming is because of people burning fossil fuels like
coal and oil. Some also think that humans are cutting down too many trees. Most scientists believe that the
sun actually became colder and is not to blame. If this is so, the Earth should be a small amount colder. Many
scientists say that the temperature will rise about 3.7 °C (6.7 °F) more in 100 years. Most major governments
and science groups agree with these ideas.

If the earth's temperature becomes hotter, the sea level will also become higher because the temperature
rise will make ice glaciers melt. The sea level rise may cause coastal areas to flood. Weather patterns,
including where and how much precipitation there is, will change. Deserts will increase in size in some areas
and decrease in others. Colder areas will become warmer faster than warm areas. Strong storms may become
more likely and farming may not make as much food (but the changing weather may also mean that storms
may become rare and farms may produce more food more easily). These effects will not be the same over the
entire Earth. The changes from one area to another are not well known.

People in government have talked about global warming. They do not agree on what to do about it.
Humans can burn less fossil fuels, adapt to any temperature changes, or try to change the Earth to reduce
warming. The Kyoto Protocol tries to reduce pollution from the burning of fossil fuels. Most governments
have agreed to it. Some people in government think nothing should change.
 • Underline the important ideas.

• Activities of guided reading with some exercises like: What do you understand about what you
have read? Give me some examples to help to decrease global warming.

• If there is vocabulary that students don´t know the meaning they can look for it in a dictionary.

After reading:

• Identify the most important ideas.

• Think about your own opinion about global warming and its possible responses: there are two
ways that global warming can be stopped, which one is the most effective, make a presentation
with a partner describing which way you agree with and create social awareness.

• The presentation includes: two minutes in front of the class using anything from the classroom
and the goal is to be aware and conscious of the dangers of global warming.

Module 7: Global warming.

Objectives:
• Identify important ideas in the text.
• Comprehend in critical way texts that are connected with their reality.

Pre-reading:
• Introduction to the topic with the most important points.
• Questions like: Do you know how global warming affects our lives? Why is global warming so
important? What do you know about global warming? The idea is that they are aware about it.
• Show them some pictures about what is happening right now in the world.
• Ask students their opinions about what is happenin
 While reading:
In pairs students have to read a text about global warming and its consequences.

The planet is warming, from North Pole to South Pole, and everywhere in between. Globally, the
mercury is already up more than 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius), and even more in sensitive
Polar Regions. And the effects of rising temperatures aren’t waiting for some far-flung future. They’re
happening right now. Signs are appearing all over, and some of them are surprising. The heat is not
only melting glaciers and sea ice; it’s also shifting precipitation patterns and setting animals on the
move.

Some impacts from increasing temperatures are already happening.

 • Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s poles. This includes mountain glaciers, ice
sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland, and Arctic sea ice.
• Researcher Bill Fraser has tracked the decline of the Adélie penguins on Antarctica, where
their numbers have fallen from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in 30 years.
• Sea level rise became faster over the last century.
• Some butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants have moved farther north or to higher, cooler areas.
• Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average.
• Spruce bark beetles have boomed in Alaska thanks to 20 years of warm summers. The insects
have chewed up 4 million acres of spruce trees.

Other effects could happen later this century, if warming continues.

• Sea levels are expected to rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 and 59 centimeters) by the end of
the century, and continued melting at the poles could add between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20
centimeters).
• Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger.
• Species that depend on one another may become out of sync. For example, plants could bloom
earlier than their pollinating insects become active.
• Floods and droughts will become more common. Rainfall in Ethiopia, where droughts are
already common, could decline by 10 percent over the next 50 years.
• Less fresh water will be available. If the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru continues to melt at its
current rate, it will be gone by 2100, leaving thousands of people who rely on it for drinking
water and electricity without a source of either.
• Some diseases will spread such as malaria carried by mosquitoes.
• Ecosystems will change—some species will move farther north or become more successful;
others won’t be able to move and could become extinct. Wildlife research scientist Martyn
Obbard has found that since the mid-1980s, with less ice on which to live and fish for food,
polar bears have gotten considerably skinnier. Polar bear biologist Ian Stirling has found a
similar pattern in Hudson Bay. He fears that if sea ice disappears, the polar bears will as well.
• Answer some questions that the teacher will write on the blackboard.

 What´s the importance of global warming nowadays?

 What does it mean heat and what is causing?

 List four impacts of temperature increased.

 List four effects if global warming continues.

After reading:
• With your partner, choose one of the effects that global warming could cause in the earth in this
century.

• Explain it very briefly to your classmates in front of the class. Students can draw things to explain,
can use anything they believe is useful.

• Students will play pictionary with actions that are related to global warming and the other classmates
have to guess. The class will be divided into two groups each group will have five actions to do in
pictionary. Students can make drawing on the blackboard.

 World is melting.
 Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger.
 Less fresh water will be available
 Some diseases will spread such as malaria carried by mosquitoes.
 Polar bears are considered skinny.
 If Ice Sea disappears, polar bears will disappear too.
 Butterflies have moved to the north.
 Precipitation has increased.
 Heat is melting glaciers.
 Penguins are in danger of extinction.
Module 7: Global warming.
Pre-reading:
• There will be some pictures related to global warming all over the classroom, students have to think
what pictures mean and give an opinion of what they think global warming is about describing the
pictures.
• Short video about global warming.

While reading:
• Students will read a text about global warming
• First students have to read once the text, highlight the vocabulary they don´t know and make a
glossary with the help of a dictionary.

The terms "global warming" and "greenhouse effect" have become common topics of conversation
worldwide. Synonymous with climate change and pollution, this issue is the contributor for mass speculation.
Every individual has the ability to help ensure the health of our environment and awareness and education is
the first step. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the sole fault of large corporations that our environment is in
crisis. It is us, the individual consumer. Without our need and demand, these companies would not be
producing ecologically harmful products. Information is our best defense and making more environmentally
sound decisions our best offense. There are many substitutes for products and merchandise that would be
more environmentally safe, it is just a matter of knowing what they are.

Waste and Recycling: it is very beneficial to use recycled paper or to use products that are manufactured
from ecologically managed forests. According to Seventh Generation "if every household in the US
replaced just one roll of 1000 sheets of toilet paper with recycled toilet paper, could save 373,000 trees,
1.48 million cubic feet of landfill space, 155 million gallons of water and avoid 62,000 pounds of
pollution". It has been said that it takes roughly 19 trees to make one ton of paper and that the usage of one
ton of recycled paper will save approximately 17 trees. Of course there is the importance of recycling your
trash, separating the cans, glasses and papers.

After reading:
• Role play: the course will be divided into two groups, a group defending the reasons linked to the
development of global warming and the other group will defend the position that the world is
becoming more polluted and full of environmental problems because of global warming.
• The teacher will choose one of each group to defend their position with arguments and then the other
classmate will give his or her arguments to debate the classmate´s position.
Annual expected learning:
Annual expected learning:

The achievement of the principal objectives for the year requires of the exposure of oral and written
text from varied topics and expresses pertinence. The suggested texts are conceptually and linguistically
more complex. The success of the learning process will depend of the appropriate recognition of the
communicative intention of diverse discourses and their patterns of textual organization.

Ability Objectives of the learning process

Reading comprehension At the end of the year the student will be able to:
1.- Demonstrate comprehension of the information in written and authentic
texts of different nature and varied extension related with their interests,
resolving problems and tasks that the text present.
a) Apply and integrate strategies and techniques of approximation to the
text, research information according their purposes:
b) Fast reading, targeted reading, extensive reading and intensive
reading.
c) Using the information from the text, codes and textual clues to
identify different kind of texts and their underlying assumptions pointing
their communicative intention.
2.- Read independently with the aid of a dictionary: recognizing and
identifying topics and subtopics and the arguments presented; recognizing
temporal sequences and following the logical development of the ideas,
establishing relationship between the whole for its parts, drawing
conclusions, synthesize information or applying it to their specific projects.
3.- Read in a critical way: recognizing the functional value of the texts,
selecting the information relevant to their interests, linking the informative
content with situations of the real life, differentiating facts and opinions,
distinguishing between hypothesis, evidence, inference and conclusion.
Making judgments about the relevance, appropriateness and applicability
of the information for their education; building a different and
representative product, it could be: poster, caricature or a new text.

Auditory comprehension 5.- Proves understanding of the information proportioned by authentic oral
texts from different nature and varied extension resolving problems and
tasks that audition present.
a) Resolving the channel and the media, type of text, the topic of
communicative even and the number of participants.
b) Pointing the communicative intention of the message.
c) Recognizing the communicative value of the pauses, intonation
and accentuation (stress).
d) Associating keywords with the subject of the message.
e) Appeal to lexical redundancy to determine the main idea.
f) Identifying the participants, their characteristics as the roles they
play in events of two or more participants.
g) Recognizing conventions and linguistic features of the speech in
different kind of texts.
 h) Selecting appropriate comprehension strategies to each
communicative situation activating prior knowledge and
experiences.
i) Carry out concrete tasks following instructions or solving
problems.

Speaking 6.- Solve everyday communicative situations in direct or mediated

exchanges:
a) Initiating or answering appropriately to requests or invitations.
b) Giving or following instructions.
c) Making suggestions and offering explanations.
d) Pointing and justifying preferences.
e) Expressing agree or disagree.
7.- Prepares and presents, according to models given by the teacher, brief
reports of texts (descriptive, narrative and argumentative) worked in class.
Writing 8.- Produce short texts:
a) Notes about read and heard texts.
b) Descriptions of professions and activities.
c) Descriptions or opinions about students and cultural activities.
9.- Write C.V, letters and advertisements, write e-mail messages and/or
faxes preferably using computer tools.
10.- Prepare brief reports from the informative content of read texts or from
fulfilled projects.
Lexical objectives 11.- Recognizes a general and specialized vocabulary of 2,000 words, in a
variety of authentic texts of various topics, in order to solve problems
listening and reading comprehension.
12.- Reuses key words or phrases in new communicative situations in the
construction of specialized glossaries.
Value objectives 13.- Values the information gained through the foreign language as a
contribution to their comprehensive training.
14.- Appreciate the value of the foreign language as a tool for use in
professional activities and employment.