Lesson Topics: sleep, time, isolation
Skill Focus: Reading, Speaking, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 1.5 hours
Lesson Plan Download: siffre-cave-experiment-advanced-042025.docx
- The lesson begins with warm-up questions about routines, time, and sleep.
- The reading passage is based on the experiments of Michel Siffre, a French geologist who spent long periods underground. Siffre's experiments, aside from being interesting, highlight how our conceptions of time change in different environments.
- The reading passage is followed by comprehension and follow-up questions.
- Next, students review the nine vocabulary items by matching them to their corresponding definitions.
- After vocabulary matching, students form discussion questions with the target vocabulary.
- The lesson has two roleplay scenarios. The first has a nurse propose a new working schedule to her shift manager so she can avoid working through the night. The second is a humorous scenario in which a man wants to live in a cave to avoid his newly born children.
- Next, students review famous quotations related to time and sleep.
- Finally, students review vocabulary and collocations before discussing some final discussion questions.
ADVANCED (C1/C2) Lesson on Time & Sleep
Warm-up Questions
- Describe your daily routine. Do you feel like you are living each day effectively?
- How did the COVID-19 lockdown affect your health and lifestyle?
- What would life look like without time?
- When you are not working and have no responsibilities, how does your sleep and waking cycle change?
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This lesson plan was created by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). Site members may photocopy and edit the file for their classes. Permission is not given to rebrand the lesson, redistribute it on another platform, or sell it as part of commercial course curriculum. ChatGPT was used to generate answer keys and some famous quotations. For questions, contact the author.
Comprehension Question Answer Key
- Recall & Retell – ...
- He originally wanted to study the properties of a newly discovered glacier.
- His sense of time slowed down—he underestimated how much time had passed and thought he had almost a month left when the experiment was actually over.
- He developed a 48-hour rhythm: around 36 hours awake and 12 hours of sleep.
- His findings helped create the field of chronobiology and later supported NASA in preparing astronauts for time-isolated missions.
- …
Vocabulary: 1- blurt out, 2- therapy, 3- impulsive, 4- self-reflection, 5- projection, 6- attribute, 7- snap at, 8- unconscious, 9- resentment, 10- suppress, 11- confront, 12- hostile
Top exports: The United States-petroleum, Canada- petroleum, Mexico-cars, China-communication devices, Brazil-soya beans, The U.K.-cars, France-aircraft, Germany-cars, South Korea-electronic circuits, Australia-coal, Greenland-fish, Russia- petroleum
Vocabulary: 1-f, 2-i, 3-a, 4-c, 5-h, 6-e, 7-d, 8-b, 9-g
Collocations 1-d, 2-a, 3-b, 4-c, 5-e
[1] https://www.vaia.com/en-us/explanations/psychology/social-context-of-behaviour/siffre-cave-study-psychology