If after reading the title you are curious to know what happened, here’s a little more information…

Sergey Ananov was 42 days into an attempt to become the first person to circumnavigate the globe in a lightweight helicopter when he was forced to ditch his aircraft in the icy waters between Canada and Greenland.

If you are still interested, if not compelled to know more, please continue reading…

This lesson sets up an extensive reading task which students read for homework. The story is Ananov’s own account of what happened and how he was able to survive.

There are two pre-reading activities: a prediction stage (slide 3) based on a photograph of Ananov is his helicopter, and a news clip (slide 4) describing the events that took place.

The actual reading should take around 20 minutes and is better suited to higher levels. Lower levels may find the text too challenging to derive pleasure from reading it.

The next lesson starts with questions (slide 8) to review the story before going on to analyse and develop the themes further (see Bloom’s taxonomy).

The final and optional stage is for learners to work in groups to create a comic strip to tell Sergey Ananov’s story. Arguably, the process is just as important as the end product and will almost certainly require staging and guidance for it to be successful. Slide 9 has some suggested staging but it’s expected this would be adapted to fit teacher needs and those of a specific class group.

The presentation slides for this lesson can be downloaded here: Sergey Ananov. Two days on ice with three polar bears

Download the comic strip template here: Comic strip

Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay