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Better, smarter places

A portrait of two cities

Do you prefer to live in a big city, in a town or a village? Do you like the area where you live? In this section, you and your classmates are going to become architects and designers  to plan an ideal city to live.

Previous activities: Where is it better?

Find below three activities to prepare the mission consisting of designing and planning an ideal city. All the language contents presented here will help you carry out your mission more easily.

Activity 1: A model city

Read the information about sustainable cities on the bbc.co.uk. website. Then, watch the video on Vitoria-Gasteiz, a city declared European Green capital in 2012. With a classmate, comment on what you can see around the city. Consider the questions below for your comments.

Activity 2:  Comparing cities

Maybe, you prefer a bigger city to live, like Paris or New York. Enter the Paris/New York video. and write down all the elements that both cities have in common.

With a classmate, compare these two big cities with your own city, town or village.  Use comparative and superlative adjectives, You can access the perfect-english-grammar.com site to have a thorough revision of these forms.

  • Take these sentences as examples: In New York , there is more traffic than in my town./The buildings in my town are shorter than in New York. / New York has got the tallest buildings.

Write down/type a list of 7 comparative/superlative sentences and publish it on the page entitled 'My writing guide' in your Weebly site.

Speaking. Which city do you and your partner prefer to live in: Vitoria-Gasteiz, Paris, New York or your own city or town? Justify your answer to the rest of the group.

Activity 3: Ideal city Marathon

Individual work. Sign in at Canva and design a mindmap  based on your ideal city. Include in the categories below the elements that you consider as ideal for your city.

When you finish your mindmap, you will present it in front of your classmates. You must know that you will have 45 seconds to talk about your ideal city. In your presentation, use WILL future sentences, as in My ideal city will have a lot of green spaces. There won't be much traffic.

Check how to use the simple future on ego4u.com.

Share your mindmap with your classmates on  Pinterest. Remember to attach a photo when you post it. Publish your mindmap on the page entitled 'My digital Resources' in your Weebly site.  

Extra resources

At the end of this section, you will have:

  • Described a townscape
  • Practised large and small quantities
  • Compared two cities
  • Practised how to make predictions
  • Planned and presented an ideal city

some, any, a lot (of), few, little, much, many

  • City - a large or important town.
  • Town - a populated area with fixed boundaries and a local government. It is usually smaller than cities
  • Village - a small community in a rural area.

To understand better what sustainability is, read some children's descriptions on this term:

• Something that lasts for a long time- maybe forever

• Like a circle- it goes around and all is re-used

• Taking care of the planet and its creatures

• Something that is good for everyone

• Thinking about what you need rather than taking what you want

• Making the world a better place for the future

• Making rules we can all follow

• Taking care of the air, water, land and those who live there

• One thing leads to another, then another. Let’s make the chain good.

Source: https://globaldimension.org.uk/wllgoal/sustainable-cities-and-communities/

Changing cities

The mission in this section is based on the design and description of an ideal city. Your teacher will evaluate the use of the language contents that you have practised in the previous activities.

Geralt. De la ciudad (CC0)

Assessment:

 
Please, read the instructions in the titles below to know accurately about your work and how to promote it.
 
Your work
Step 1: Design your ideal city
  • In a group of four students, look at the mindmaps that you all have created in activity 3 and agree on which one you are going to work.
  • In your group, make suggestions on what elements you can add to  improve the ideal city portrayed in this mindmap.
  • Write a draft describing what your ideal city will be like. Use key vocabulary on sustainable cities, quantifiers and future simple sentences in your description. The template entitled Planning my green city on the  sustainablelearning.com site can help you.
  • Distribute the categories on your city description among the members in the group. Let your groupmates supervise your work on this draft.
  • Enter the online tool citycreator.com,  Canva or any other tool and design your city according to your group's criteria. Save your city design (city1 map).
  • Take turns to record the final description of your ideal city.
  • Publish your podcast and share it with another group from your class.
Step 2: City exchange 
  • Listen to another group's description of their ideal city. In your group and in a collaborative way, design on the citycreator.com site the type of city that you imagine from the other group's podcast.
  • Save your new city map (city2 map) and share it with the group that recorded this city description.
  • Your group will receive another group's city map based on your own description.
  • Discuss in your group which map is better, your own map or the other group's.
  • With the whole class, comment on all the elements that an ideal city will have.
  • Take notes of all the features for an ideal city and keep them for the preparation of your stand at an Expo, With this list of features, you could make a proposal of a future sustainable city to the authorities coming to your Expo stand.
Work promotion

Publish your city1 map, city2 map and and your podcast on the page 'My Digital Resources'  in your Weebly site. You can share your work with the rest of classmates on Pinterest. To do this, remember to accompany your posts with images.

After completing the mission, remember to open your learning diary and answer the questions about how you felt while describing and designing your ideal city map.

Learning diary

How is it going? Open again your Learning Diary (download in editable odt format, download in pdf)  on your site and create a new post on your blog with the title 'Better, smarter places'. Click on Writing the post and answer the questions.

Creado con eXeLearning (Ventana nueva)