Mars Lesson Plan

Learning Objectives: To practise reading for

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

detail and inferring meaning from context.

Completion Time: 60 minutes

Skill: Reading

Age/Level: Adult/Advanced
Resources: Life on Mars Worksheet,
Life on Mars Key, Mars Questionnaire,
Mars Key, pens, paper, a whiteboard and
pens. N.B. As one of the objectives is
inferring meaning from context, learners
should not use dictionaries in this lesson.

Preparation
Make copies of the four documents listed above, one for each student. For the Mars
Questionnaire, only the first page needs to be copied as the reading text in this document is the
same as the one in the worksheet.

Warm-Up (about 10 minutes)

Ask the class whether they believe that it is possible that life exists on Mars. If not, could
it ever have existed in the past, or might it exist in the future?

Tell the class that they are going to read a text about the possibility of life on Mars.
Working alone, students write a list of 810 words or phrases that they believe might be
in the text. They can then compare their list in pairs.

Reading for gist (7 minutes)

Write on the board the questions: Do scientists think that there is life on Mars today?
Why/why not? Hand out the text which is on the last page of Life on Mars Worksheet,
and allow no more than three minutes for students to skim the text and find the answer.
Elicit the answer from the class.

Key:

Probably not. There is no liquid water on the planet, and the Viking probe did not find any
organic material.

Reading for detail (15 minutes)

Hand out the rest of the Life on Mars Worksheet. The Before you read section and the first
part of the While you read section of the worksheet have already been covered, so direct
students to the second part of the While you read section, in which learners decide if a set of

Author: Tom Booth

Pearson Education 2008

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Mars Lesson Plan

statements are true or false according to the text, or whether the text does not say either way.

Allow about 68 minutes for students to work alone and answer the questions aj, then ask
students to form pairs and check their answers together with their partner. They should explain
their answer where there is disagreement.

Write the letters aj on the board, and give each letter to one student. Students then write the
answers on the board, next to the letter that they were assigned. In open class, ask if anyone
disagrees with any of the answers on the board. If so, ask them to explain why. Do not give or
explain the answer yourself before giving the class ample opportunity to work it out themselves
by reasoning with each other. Continue until the correct answers are all on the board.

Key:

Vocabulary: Inferring meaning from context (10 minutes)

Direct students to the After you read section of the worksheet. Students work alone to
choose the best definition for six words or phrases that appear in the text. Encourage
students to use the context in which the word or phrase is found to deduce the most
likely meaning.

Ask pairs to compare their answers together, then hand out the Life on Mars Key for
them to check. Point out that reading a text and inferring meaning is an important way in
which vocabulary is acquired.

Key:

Author: Tom Booth

Pearson Education 2008

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Mars Lesson Plan

Personal response to the text (15 minutes)

Hand out the questions from the Mars Questionnaire. The first three questions check
general understanding of the text, while the remaining fifteen ask for students personal
responses to issues related to the theme of the text. Tell learners that they must answer
the first three questions, but that, for the remaining questions, they can choose which
ones they would like to answer. Working alone, students read through the questions
418 and cross out up to seven questions that they are not particularly interested in
answering.

Arrange students in new groups of three to discuss the questions. Nobody needs to
answer any of the questions that they crossed out. Allow at least ten minutes for this
discussion.

Key:
1

It is unlikely that there is no life on Mars now as no organic matter has been found
and there seems to be no liquid water. However, findings suggesting that there was
once liquid water on Mars lead many scientists to believe that life on Mars was
once possible.

4,000 million years ago, life first appeared on Earth. Because the sun was not as
strong then, temperatures on Earth at that time might have been similar to
temperatures on Mars now.

A thick atmosphere holds the suns heat in, so any water on the planet would be
less likely to freeze. Also, atmospheric pressure prevents liquid water from
vapourising. Liquid water is a key ingredient in the development of life.

4 18:

Your own answers.

Closure (3 minutes)
Tell each student to turn to the person next to them and tell him/her everything that he/she has
learned in this lesson, including things learned from the text, things learned about reading
strategies and things learned about fellow classmates in the speaking section.

Author: Tom Booth

Pearson Education 2008

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