THE INCA: A LOST SOCIETY LESSON PLAN

THE INCA: A LOST SOCIETY LESSON PLAN

Text:

How is that a people who had no written language and didin’t even know of the existence of the wheel could within the space of a hundred years build an empire that spanned some 2,500 miles across South America?

The people I’m referring to are of course the Inca. The Inca were a small ethnic group who came to rule an empire of more than 12 million people. They ruled their empire from Cuzco in Peru and were not the brutal conquerors that many think to be. They took control of other cultures through a mixture arms and gifts. They were skilled craftsman who were so impressed by them that they thought of them as gods. The Inca were in many ways very tolerant and assimilated new peoples, their cultures and even their religions in their own, but not so the Spanish conquistadors who arrived in 1532.

With an army of less than 400 men they were able to defeat the 40,000 strong inca army and they soon set about looting and plundering the riches of the Inca culture. Most of the amazing architecture and complex building they had worked to build up was torn down and made into palaces and fortresses for the conquering Spanish.

Amazingly, one Inca site remained undiscovered until 1911. It was the amazing Macchu Picchu, the Inca temple to the sun, but by this time of course the Inca were long gone, either killed off by conquistadors or the deseases that they brought with them. Today it still stands, at the top of a mountain beside the Urubamba River in Peru, a memorial to the greatness of a people that we can now only read about in books.

The text presents the following features:

Readability: because it can be exploited in the 3^rd year of the Scuola Media;

Suitability: because it can be put in a cross- curricular section including History and Geography thanks to its content;

Exploitability: because students should be able to improve their language skills and learn more about History, and moreover, the text can suggest further readings and links and open a debate about nowadays Tolerance.

Class: 3^rd year of Scuola Media

Level: A1/A2 (C.E.F.)

Subject: the Inca

Materials: text, audiocassette, pictures;

Time: 2 hours lesson

Skills: listening, reading, writing, speaking, interacting;

Operative Strategies: Humanistic Approach and Functional- Communicative. Students must always feel at ease in their learning process. They have to actively participate during the lesson and the teacher should not interrupt their oral production. Corrections should come later.

Objectives: Students will develop their listening and reading skills and improve and broaden their vocabulary. They will revise grammar; practising talking in L2 about different subjects. Moreover they will practise how to surf the net searching for specific information related to the given text.

Anticipated problems: for what concerns difficulties linked to the new vocabulary, the teacher will provide students with a vocabulary box, at the bottom of the text, containing all the words which students are supposed to ignore. For what is related to any grammar- syntax difficulties, the teacher will plainly explain the passages in L1( the whole lesson is thaught in L2).

Pre-Requisites: simple present; simple past; basic vocabulary; prepositions; basic knowledge about History and Geography; being able to express their own opinion about a given topic.

PROCEDURE

Pre –reading activities

Warm up: The teacher writes the word “EL DORADO” on the blackboard and asks the students if they know something about it. Then the teacher introduces the main traits about Inca’s history and tell some hints about the mythical place.(5/8 min.)

Aim of the activity: introducing the new topic and arising curiousity among students about it.

The teacher let the students listen to the audio of the text asking them to concentrate on words they already know and try to catch the gist of the text.

Aim: practice listening skill

Second listening

The teacher let the students listen to the audio a second time and now asks the students to write down the words they think are the key-words in the text. Then the teacher gives students the text cut in strips and asks student to put it in the correct order.

Aim: practising logical connections.

Third listening

The last listening will be used as a checking .

While reading activities

Once the text is put in the correct order, the teacher give students a worksheet containing 8 questions about the text:

1. Who were the Inca?

2. when did the Spanish conquistadors arrive?

3. What is Macchu Picchu?

4. Where did Inca live?

5. What did the Inca produce?

6. What did the villagers think about the Inca?

7. What happened in 1911?

8. Where do we find information about Inca?

Aim: reading for specific information;

At this point the teacher asks the students to focuse their attention on verbs. She asks to underline the verbs in the past and then tranform them into present tense.

Aim: revising simple past and simple present.

The students are now asked to underline the pronouns in the text and then substitute them with the corresponding nouns.

Aim: focusing on choesive devices.

Post reading activities

The teacher gives the students the following sentences, asking to complete them, according to their own opinion:

1. The part of the text that most surprised me was....

2. I think the conquistadors were able to defeat the Inca army because.....

3. I think the conquistadors tore down the Inca buildings and built their own because.....

4. I think Macchu Picchu wasn’t discovered by the conquistadores because.....

5. I think the best thing about Inca was......

6. I would/wouldn’t like to go to Macchu Picchu because....

Aim: improve writing skills and expressing own opinions.

Homework

The teacher asks stidents to surf the net and to searc for new materials about Inca’s society, way of life and culture. The class is divided in groups of 2 or 4 people each and every group has t choose a specific topic. The groups have to produce a written text about the materials found with the help of the Internet and then write down a dialogue between a Inca and an interviewer, in order to show the class information about the Inca’s way of life in a different and more enjoyable way.

Aim: to revise and improve wrting skills, speaking and interaction.