Lesson Topics: heroes, crime, super-powers, storytelling
Skill Focus: Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 2 hours
Lesson Plan Download: superhero-phoenix-jones-advanced-082025.docx
- The lesson begins with warm-up questions about superheroes and crime.
- Next, students preview a word cloud from the lesson's video and try to predict its story.
- This is followed by a short foreword giving some background on the lesson's video, which is a YouTube short (0:58 AmE). The video describes a real-life vigilante superhero named Phoenix Jones of Seattle, Washington. Jones's story is quite entertaining and ends with a twist echoing Harvey Dent's famous line that “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
- As usual, the video is followed by comprehension questions.
- Next, students form discussion questions with the target vocabulary.
- The first speaking activity is a panel in which students discuss who should win an award in their city as "Hero of the City." The candidates include a school teacher, a police officer, and Phoenix Jones.
- Next is a three-part speaking activity in which students create their own superhero. After ascribing him/her a superpower, they must then use the six images (somewhat random) and the lesson's vocabulary to create a coherent story about their hero. The activity ends with a Corrupt-A-Wish grammar activity that has students use the second conditional to explain the downsides of all the superpowers they had reviewed in the first part of this activity.
- As the lesson draws to a close, students review the lesson's vocabulary, discuss famous quotations, and then match collocations used in the video.
- The lesson closes with some final discussion questions.
- In my opinion, this lesson should be a hit with creative students with a high level of fluency.
UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2/C1) Lesson on Superhero Phoenix Jones
Warm-up
- When you were a child, who did you look up to?
- Do you have a favorite superhero?
- What more can be done to reduce crime?
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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
- …
- After his car was broken into and his son was cut on broken glass.
- $10,000.
- The quote fits because he started as a hero protecting people but later was arrested for drug dealing, which made him a villain.
- …
- …
Vocabulary: 1-stray, 2-villain, 3-allegedly, 4-perception, 5-shattered, 6-sting operation, 7-mugs, 8-podium, 9-spiraled, 10-vigilante, 11-over the course of, 12-sour
Collocations: 1-b, 2-g, 3-d, 4-f, 5-a, 6-e, 7-c
[1] https://www.looper.com/1661897/whatever-happened-phoenix-jones/