Lesson Topics: mortality, gratitude
Skill Focus: Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 1.75 hours
Lesson Plan Download: ten-minutes-to-live-advanced-082025.docx
- The lesson begins with warm-up questions about accomplishment and near-death experiences.
- Next, students watch one short 1:20-minute YouTube video of a news report describing a false missile alert that occurred in Hawaii in 2018. This is followed by another short 1:21-minute video of Jim Carrey talking to talk-show host Jimmy Fallon about his stressful but transcendent experience during that emergency. The lesson touches on gratitude and recognizing your blessings.
- The video is followed by comprehension and follow-up questions.
- Next, students match vocabulary from the passage to definitions. They then form discussion questions with the target vocabulary.
- In the first speaking activity, students discuss what they'd do if they had 10 minutes, one day, or one year to live.
- The highlights of this lesson are its roleplays, both of which are based on apparently true stories that occurred after the missile alert. In the first, a woman must explain a white lie she told to a friend who confessed that he loved her after hearing the alert. In the second, a woman attempts to sue the state of Hawaii for the alert which led her alcoholic brother into a relapse that ultimately cost him his life.
- For something more uplifting, the final speaking activity has students express gratitude for the blessings they've received in life.
- 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.
ADVANCED (C1/C2) Lesson about Ten Minutes to Live
Warm-up
- What are some major things in life that you have accomplished so far?
- What are some major things in life that you have not accomplished yet?
- Have you ever felt like your life was about to end? (Note: avoid telling any really sad stories)
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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
1 – …
2 – A single employee could trigger the alert with no fail-safe or double-check, showing serious weaknesses in Hawaii’s emergency-alert procedure.
3 – He applied basic tornado-safety rules: move to a small, window-free interior space (a closet) and “hunker down.”
4 – He believed evacuation traffic might trap him; he preferred not to “die in the car” and instead stayed home, reflecting on life.
5 – He reached a calm, accepting state of gratitude and peace just before he learned the threat was false.
6 – His actions show he values gratitude, reflection, and emotional connection with loved ones more than panic or blame.
7 – Possible positive: alert systems were upgraded worldwide, increasing future safety. Possible negative: many residents suffered lasting anxiety and lost trust in official alerts.
Vocabulary: 1-alert, 2-heads rolled, 3-pissed off, 4-drill, 5-come up with, 6-blessings, 7-shelter, 8-gratitude, 9-posed, 10-missile
Collocations: 1-e, 2-a, 3-d, 4-g, 5-b, 6-c, 7-f