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This Ship Is Huge

A Warmer

In each box, there are two things. Which is big and which
is small?

ship / boat

city / village tree / flower

car / bicycle lake / sea

sandwich / pizza
tiger / cat

tent / stadium house / palace

apple tree / apple

B Vocabulary

These are words from the Reading article. Draw lines to connect each word to
its definition.

Word Definition
huge a place where you eat
gym a game
ballroom a place where you play sport
dining room very good, high quality
bridge a place where you swim
pool a place where you dance
deck very big
luxurious the floor of a ship
bingo where the captain drives the ship

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C Reading

‘The Liberty’ is a cruise ship. Many people go on ‘The

Liberty’ for their holidays and the cruise ship travels
around the Caribbean Sea.

The captain of ‘The Liberty’ is Klaus Neumann. He is from

Germany. Read his description of ‘The Liberty’ and
everything you can find on the ship.

I work on ‘The Liberty’. This ship is huge! She is a fantastic ship. We travel to
places like Barbados and Jamaica with thousands of tourists. Vacations on this
ship are expensive!

This place is called the bridge. I control the whole ship from here. There is one
bridge on every ship. There is a big window and from this window, I can see
everything. Look! There are three other ships in the harbor today: two oil ships
and another cruise ship. There are two swimming pools on ‘The Liberty’. There is
one on Deck G and it’s very warm. There is also one on Deck H and this pool is
very cold!

Now, we are on Deck F and this deck is where we have all the wonderful things
for the tourists. There are two gyms. Also, there is one bingo hall. The bingo hall
is full every evening! Also, there is a big cinema with the latest Hollywood movies.

There is one ballroom over there. It’s very luxurious. Those lights are from
Vienna. They are two hundred years old! Now, we are in the dining room. There
are three dining rooms on ‘The Liberty’ because there are more than 3000 people
who want to eat.

D Grammar

Look at Captain Neumann’s description in Section C again.

Work with another student. Find all examples of the number
one and all examples of other numbers. Underline them.

Do we use there is or there are before the number

one?

Which do we use before other numbers?

Write some examples here:

______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________

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E Reading Comprehension

Work with another student to answer these questions.

1. Is there a cinema on ‘The Liberty’?

2. How many gyms are there on ‘The Liberty’?
3. How many swimming pools are there on ‘The
Liberty’?
4. Is ‘The Liberty’ an expensive ship?
5. How old are the lights from Vienna?
6. How many passengers are there on the ship?

F Game

Look around the room for one minute.

What is in the room?

How many chairs are there?

How many tables?

Is there a bookshelf? Or a lamp?

Now answer your teacher’s questions.

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Teacher Notes
Target Language: There is / there are, adjectives.
Duration: 60 minutes

1 Structure and Timing (all times approximate)

A. Warmer (5 minutes)
B. Vocabulary (15 minutes)
C. Reading (10 minutes)
D. Grammar (10 minutes)
E. Reading Comprehension (10 minutes)
F. Game (10 minutes)

Total: 60 minutes.

2 Procedure

A. Warmer

The aim of today’s lesson is to enable students to use “there is/are” and adjectives
with the verb “to be”. There will also be some dictionary work.

The first section will teach a little vocabulary and get students thinking about large
and small things. The subject of the reading later in the lesson is a large ship with
many amenities aboard.

This warmer can be done as a whole class, with students circling or underlining the
larger of the two options.

B. Vocabulary

Students will need their dictionaries today for this vocabulary section. This part will
pre-teach some of the more difficult words that will be found in the following reading.

At Beginner level, it’s expected that students will be using a bilingual dictionary,
although bilingual dictionaries still come in many flavors. There should be information
in each word’s entry to at least identify the language part (i.e. noun, adjective, verb,
etc) and to give its phonetic transcription.

With their dictionaries to hand, put students into pairs to work through the vocabulary
list, matching words with their definitions. If you haven’t already, this is also a good
opportunity to get students into good vocabulary-recording habits.

Students should be recording at least the word, the translation into their own
language and an example sentence.

Ask students to initially work through this exercise alone, using their dictionaries to
look up each word and check the definitions in order to be able to complete the
matching exercise. Once they have done this, they can work with other students to
check what they have done.

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Answer Key

huge very big

gym a place where you play sport
ballroom a place where you dance
dining room a place where you eat
bridge where the captain drives the ship
pool a place where you swim
deck the floor of a ship
luxurious very good, high quality
bingo a game

C. Reading

The reading is a description of a cruise ship. There are a few basic Present Simple
sentences (“we travel”, “I control”, “we have”, etc.) but it is mostly “to be” using
“there is/are” constructions to describe what is on the ship.

As a pre-reading activity, before your students begin reading, ask them to name a few
things they would expect to see on a cruise ship? A supermarket? A swimming pool?
Once you have a list of 6-8 things on the board, you have given your students a
reason to read. They can go through the text and check which of the class’s guesses
were correct or not. The vocabulary activity from earlier should prevent too many
problems with unknown words.

D. Grammar

Once you have checked which of their guesses were correct, put the students into
pairs and ask them to look for all the numbers in the reading, both examples where
“there is” is used for one item and “there are” is used for multiple items.

Examples:

There is one bridge...

There are three other ships...
There are two swimming pools...
There is one on Deck G...

This is a simple but effective way of eliciting the rule for use of “there is” and “there
are”. Note also the examples of “there is a” instead of “there is one”.

E. Reading Comprehension

Students can work with the same partner for the reading comprehension exercise,
which is an open-question exercise.

Answer Key

1. Yes, there is.

2. There are two.
3. There are two.
4. Yes, it is.
5. They are two hundred years old.
6. There are more than three thousand people on the ship.

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F. Game

The final game will hopefully be a bit of fun and help students consolidate their use of
“there is/are”.

Ask your class to look around at the room they’re in, then close their eyes or lower
their head so they can’t see it anymore. Ask questions about what there is/are in the
room. Don’t accept short answers (just numbers) and don’t insist on overly long
answers either.

Teacher: How many chairs are there in the room?

Student A: There are seven.

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