This is a lesson that evolved from a worksheet I found on www.bogglesworldesl .com and turned into a pretty successful activity/game class.

1) Post the 'survival flash cards' on the board with magnets. Divide the classes into 4 or 5 teams and make a chart with a column for each team on the board. Tell them they are going on a vacation and need to pick 3 (if you have 5 teams, 4 if you have 4 teams) items to take with them. Move each item into the column of the team that chooses it. I try to keep the order of selection random so that team #5 isn't always choosing last. (5 minutes)

2) Hand out "Two Survival Situations" work sheet to everyone in the class. Tell them they go on vacation but they have very bad luck. But, if they listen carefully, their team might be able to survive vacation. (Visual aids of Bears and big boats are suggested) Tell them you will read the "Bear Attacks" article first, they must listen and fill in the missing words. When you are finished, ask the students to tell you what words are missing. As they answer, write the missing words in the column of the team that answered, each word is worth 1 point (as you begin to write the words under the column of corresponding team, you wil get a big response from the class, suddenly everyone will be dying to give you an aswer, be warned, it can get LOUD). For tricky words, get the students to spell it out (ie. prey, racehorse, recuers, procuring) and only give a point for the correct spelling. Repeat with the 'Surviving Shipwrecks' article, give 2 points for each missing word given. (30 mins)
 
3) Lightning round - have students turn over their paper and give them a minute or two to read over the comprehension questions. Ask for the answers and give 3 points for each answer. (10-15 minutes)

4) Tally up the points for each team. The students will get really excited, but tell them you're not done yet. We have to see what they packed in their bags for their vacation. I award points for useful items (1 point for sunscreen, hat; 2 points for mirror/knife; 3 points for the yellow sweater because it's warm, and brightly colored) and take away points for the useless stuff like hand lotion and MP3 player. This is kind of an arbitrary thing, you can adjust points as you see fit, it's just fun to mess with them abit; they freak out over minus points. Tally up the totals and give prizes to the most successful teams (5 minutes)

The missing words for Bear Attacks are (in order of appearance): hiking, Canada, wouldn't, avoid, attacks, away, started, What, wrong, prey, faster, racehorse, towards, slowly, noises, depends, kind, climb a tree, play dead, neck, female, good idea, male, eat people, climb trees.

The missing words for Shipwrecks are: shipwreck, sank, small boat, food, important, one month, rescued, probably, worry, important, visible, recuers, Mirrors, clothing, signaling, suppose, consider, cold, fresh water, about a week, warm clothing, a few hours, procuring.

Gah, just realized that I spelt "Rescuers" wrong both times I typed it that lesson plan!

Glad your students had fun with it Nancy!

Thanks so much!  I took this lesson and altered it to work with a few middle school students I tutor and it went over really well.  Was all kinds of spinoff conversation, they had a lot of fun with it.
Afterwards we played pictionary to practice new words they learned.

It went really well with a class of 25 high school boys. The jokers were allowed to joke and the brains could approach it laterally. Everyone got a chance to speak as I nominated each student at least once to explain their team's decisions. Excellent powerpoint and excellent lesson. Thanks.

i am unable to open this because my school only has Microsoft 2003, is there anyway i can open this link another way?  or can you save it in a different format for me to download.  thanks

Can you save it in a different format for me to download.  thanks

I've converted the powerpoints to Microsoft Powerpoint 97 format and attached them to the original post to keep the files in the same place.

Also, you can download Microsoft Open Office, or something like that.  I've seen many a post about it on this website and it allows you to open files from any version.

Glad you guys are getting use out of this lesson! :)

OpenOffice is a great and free office suite, but it's not made by Microsoft.  You can download it at www.openoffice.org.  Or, if you're worried about or can't install software on the work computers, you can put the whole thing on a flash drive and run it on any computer you want without any installation.  You can download the portable version at www.portableapps.co m.  It's only 100MB or so. 

As an alternative, Microsoft offers converters for the newer Office 2007 format for the older Office versions.  Get that here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en

Where do you download the file? Unfortunately, I don't see it anywhere on this thread.  Could someone please point it out for me?  Thank you.

To which file are you referring? The files for the Deserted Island lesson are in the first post.

Yikes!  I had no idea, thanks for the heads up!

Great lesson, thanks.  I taught the lesson to my 2nd and 3rd grade high school students in two parts.  I turned the Survival situations into a game using a loose rubric I awarded points based on how well they dealt with the situation.  Students loved it when I would kill members of their group. For example, Max was the only person who I said could kill the bear everyone else was eaten.