Covid-19 quiz exposes misconceptions

Almost anything we do about covid-19 is going to have a short expiry date. Nevertheless, I'm posting this exercise as it's from one of my favourite YouTube channels, ColdFusion. It's one of the new wave of semi-professional science & technology channels that offer fresh, well-researched and entertaining short videos that are perfect for use in English classes.

Dagogo Altraide is the person behind ColdFusion and his videos are not always perfect. But in a classroom situation, that can be an advantage as we want students to approach media critically. It's not so easy to be critical of well-funded, slick and professional films. Dagogo himself usually ends videos by asking, "What do you think?" and it's this kind of curiosity and openness that makes him a good role model. Furthermore, Dagogo's optimism is infectious.

Here's the video:

Altraide,  Dagogo [ColdFusion]. 29 March 2020. "COVID-19: We’re Fighting a War, But There’s Hope". Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/RFnSmcfKWQo

Here's the quiz: https://forms.gle/Fh3VCjRWpiVbzsTH8
I was a bit surprised to discover how many misconceptions people have about the new coronavirus. So the quiz is worth taking.

Here's a link that allows you to make a copy of the quiz (but you'll need to send an access request):
Quiz - Covid-19: We're fighting a war but there's hope

English week 48

In school right now, almost everyone seems to be coughing, sneezing and complaining about being tired so what better time to study the language of health and illness?

First, we're working our way through the following vocabulary exercises:

Health & illness (En4)
Health, illness, injury (En5)
Health & Medicine (En 6)

When classifying illnesses according to "not serious", "more serious" and "very serious", one of our bright students wanted to write, "1 heart attack", "2 heart attacks" and "3 heart attacks".

Well, that's something the book's author probably never thought of. Perhaps he might respond as Luigi Patrovita did in the classic 80s film, Raw Deal...

With our newfound vocabulary, it would be nice to try some role play and of course, no English class about health would be complete without us learning some Doctor doctor jokes.

There's a serious side to our study of health. It's important to be able to describe symptoms and ask for help in English - it might even save your life.

Here are 2 songs related to this week's topic...

Madness, "Cardiac arrest"" (songmeanings.com)

Regina Spektor, "Chemo Limo" (songmeanings.com)