Lesson plan

Topic
Star Stories

Aims
• To raise awareness of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People on 9 August
• To talk about how people have always found animals in the patterns in the night sky
• To discuss two stories learned by indigenous children on different continents, both using the dark
constellations (the parts of the sky where stars cannot be seen)
• To develop children’s speaking, observation and collaboration skills
• To provide children with an opportunity to explore the knowledge of indigenous cultures
• To practise the present and past simple when completing a text
• To practise the present simple when describing the patterns the children can see in the night sky

Age group
Young learners aged 9-12 years

Level
High A2 and above

Time
50 - 60 minutes

Materials
• Star Stories Worksheet 1 (1 per pupil or group)
• The Emu and the Snake in the Sky Worksheet 2 (1 per group)
• Teacher’s Key to the Star Stories Worksheet
• An image of the Milky Way to project on a large screen
• LearnEnglish Kids website (see links in stage 5 below)

Introduction
This lesson can be used to celebrate International Day of the World’s Indigenous People on 9 August or
at any time of the year. 9 August is the day we celebrate the people of the world who live in traditional
ways and who speak their own languages. Two indigenous peoples are the Australian Aborigines and
the Quechua people of the Andes region of South America. The Quechua people are related to the
Incas, an important civilisation of the past.

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 Lesson plan
The stories in the text show two cultures where the starless spaces in the sky, called the dark
constellations, were used to identify objects. The stories relate to the emu and the snake. Children first
learn the key vocabulary and then complete the text with the missing words. Afterwards, children identify
the animals in the story, found in the dark constellations, and finish by looking for other patterns in the
night sky.

Procedure

Before the • Download and make a copy of the worksheet (one per student or group). Ideally,
lesson a computer screen should be available in order to show children the story
animals found in the dark constellations of the Milky Way. If using, have the
LearnEnglish Kids page ready on your computer or screen for the follow-up
activities (see stage 5 below).

1. Warmer • Introduce the topic by telling the students that International Indigenous Peoples
(10-15 mins) Day is celebrated on the 9th of August. Ask children if they know anything about
cultures where people still live in traditional ways and what kinds of things they
do. Answers include growing their own food, fishing and hunting, building their
own houses and making their own clothes, and knowing about the land they live
on, the seasons they have and what can be found there.

• Talk to children about how people have always told each other stories while
sitting around the fire at night. Ask them to imagine what it was like to live in the
dark, with the big sky full of stars above them.

• Put a picture of the Milky Way on the computer screen and ask children to tell
you what they know about the stars and the Milky Way. Answers include that it is
our home or galaxy, that it is called the Milky Way because of its white colour in
the sky, and that the parts of it we see change during the year.

• Point to the dark parts of the Milky Way, explaining that while we use the stars to
find patterns (star constellations), some indigenous people use the dark parts.
We call these dark constellations.

2. Vocabulary • Give each student (or group) a worksheet and ask them to cover the descriptions
& reading of the words on the right-hand side of the page. Go through the vocabulary
(20-30 mins) together, describing what each word or phrase means. Once you have elicited
definitions of the key words, ask them to match them to the descriptions in the
right-hand column.

• Use the Teacher’s Key to correct this activity and the one below:

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 Lesson plan
• Once children understand the vocabulary, get them to read the text in pairs or
groups, putting the missing words in the gapped text. Look at the images of the
night skies and find the mother emu, the father emu and the snake.

3. Follow-up • Once the worksheet has been completed, get children to look at your image of
(5-10 mins) the Milky Way once again. In pairs, they look for shapes, animals or objects in
the image. Each pair comes to the front of the class and says, for example ‘We
can see a (fish / triangle / car)’ The other students try to guess where the object
is. They could ask ‘Is it made of stars?’ ‘Is it made from the dark spaces?’

4. Creative • Children draw their objects or animals and display their worksheets on the
work noticeboard or glue them into their notebooks.
(5-10 mins)

5. Extension • Revise and extend the topic using the following activities from the LearnEnglish
(10 – 15 Kids website:
mins)
o A story about a rabbit, a tiger and the moon:

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/short-stories/the-sneaky-rabbit

o Song: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (younger children) with game

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/twinkle-twinkle-little-star

o One small world (older children) with game

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/songs/one-small-world

Extra activities • For homework, children could look up at the night sky to find the moon, planets
and stars. If you live in Australia or South American, ask children to look for the
emu and the snake in the night sky.
• Find more stories about indigenous people and their stories to tell the children.
• Learn about the Greek stories based on the constellations in the sky.

Contributed by
Karen Elliott

www.teachingenglish.org.uk
© The British Council, 2018 The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity.