Broken and World Records Lately????

If your students are anything like mine, they are constantly competing. Who is the best? Who is the fastest? Why not give them a little lesson on World Records? I was interested in them too, when I was in primary school.

Prior to doing any part of the lesson set it up with simple questions, this can help work on good, better, best and other comparatives. Have you ever competed in an event? Do you do sports? Have you been to a competition? Show pictures of world records and describe them, the guy who eats hot dogs, Kobayashi, if you have access to video clips show events like pie eating contests and other such record beating things.

Here are some examples of world record topics I found in a Theme of the Week book.

There German solar probe, Helios B, launched in 1976 has been recorded at 149,125 mph or 240,091.25 km/h. Imagine they had a rocket that could move that fast and they could go anywhere they wanted. Have students discuss this, if that is not at the level your students are at, they can make a map showing where they would go and you can give them prep questions for them to answer, but discussions work better.

The English language contains about 490,000 words, but it is unlikely that any one person uses more than 60,000. Ask students to look up ten new words and have them find different ways of teaching them to each other. See if they can stump you with words that even the English teacher may not know!

The greatest amount of money ever found and returned was $500,000 dollars or 100,000,000 forints(about). Discuss what you would do if you found that money, would you give it back, what would you buy?

A 100-ton (90t) snowman was built in Schaumburg, Illinois, in 1986. Look up where this is. Ask students if they could do that this year and why or why not? List other uses for this much snow.

IF YOU ARE INTO DOING PROJECTS WITH YOUR STUDENTS THIS WORKS WELL!
Tell students that the smallest independent country in the world is the state of the Vatican City in Rome. They have been given a country of their own. Give the country a name, location, imports and exports, national anthem, flag, population, size, culture, customs, cities, and short history.