Wonderful Sights. Buildings.

Lesson : WONDERFUL SIGHTS. BUILDINGS.

AIMS: - to know new information about different sights and buildings in the

world;

- to practice speaking, reading, listening and writing skills of pupils;

- to use new information for making dialogues of pupils;

- to learn new vocabulary units;

-to work with authentic materials.

MATERIALS: the texts for listening and reading, hand-outs, the pictures to the

topic.

The type of the lesson: combined.

I. Introduction.

T. Dear boys and girls! Today we are going to talk to you about different and beautiful sights and buildings of the world we live in. The main aim of our lesson not only to know about them but also to form desire of you to keep these marvelous places and buildings for our future generations.

Warm-up:

-How many famous buildings in the world can you name? You have got one minute to write down as many as you can think of.

II. The main part of the lesson.

SPEAKING

Look at the photo below of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Guess which of these things the palace had at the end of the eighteenth century.

art gallery, church, exotic birds, fountains, handing garden, lake, library, rare plants, school, theatre, zoo

LISTENING

a). Listen and check your guesses from Exercise 1.

b). Listen again and write the dates from the events below.

1. _________Peter the Great founded the city of St Petersburg.

2. _________Empress Elizabeth ordered Rastrelli to design a new winter palace.

3. _________Catherine the Great became Empress.

4. _________A fire destroyed the inside of the Winter Palace.

5. _________The Winter Palace became the headquarters of the Russian

government.

6. _________It was attacked by the communists.

7. _________The German siege of Leningrad began.

8. _________The siege of Leningrad ended.

Answers: 1- 1703, 2- 1752, 3-1762, 4-1837, 5- March 1917, 6- 25^th of October

1917, 7- September 1941, 8- March 1944

4.Listen to a radio broadcast about one of Russia’s famous monuments. Choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D). You will hear the recording twice.

1.The Winter Palace

A. was already planned by Peter the Great.

B. was a new version of an older building.

C. was not an exceptionally big structure.

D. was partly used for religious purposes.

2.Which sentence about the garden ordered by Catherine the Great is NOT true?

1. It was not used by the empress only.

2. It included some water decorations.

3. The plants grown in it were studied by scientists.

4. The animals living in it were not normally met in Russia.

3.The hermitage was a building where

1. Catherine entertained her guests.

2. many famous artists had their rooms.

3. only Russian art was exhibited.

4. some contemporary plays were shown.

4. Why did Catherine order new buildings?

A. She didn’t like the hermitage any more.

B. The hermitage was becoming old-fashioned.

C. The hermitage was getting too small.

D. She started collecting books.

5. Which event in the history of the Winter Palace since Catherine’s death is NOT true?

A. New works of art were added.

B. A new building was designed.

C. It housed a new ruling body.

D. It was open to the public.

TAPESCRIPT

Good morning everybody. I’m going to start by giving you a short introduction to the buildings of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. Right, as you probably know, St.Petersburg was established as a new city by Peter the Great in 1703 and it soon became the capital of the Russian Empire. In 1752, Empress Elizabeth ordered her Italian architect, Rastrelli, to design a new winter residence. The Winter Palace was an enormous building which even has a palace church in one corner of it.

Empress Elizabeth died in 1761 but in the following year, Catherine the Great became empress after the death of her husband. She wanted somewhere to get away from the palace and relax but the Winter Palace had no garden. So she ordered her architects to build a hanging garden next to the palace and a small “hermitage”. The garden was a place for her and her favourites to relax to relax and enjoy themselves. The garden had fountains, rare plants and exotic birds.

Next to the garden was the hermitage, a building where Catherine held private parties and dinners. Catherine also started to collect paintings and other works of art and started to fill the hermitage with them. She bought paintings from all around Europe, by great masters like Rembrandt, Rubens, Tintoretto and Velazquez.

After a while, she had another problem. She needed more room for her collection of paintings so she ordered her architects to design another new building for all her pictures next to her hermitage. And neat to that, Catherine ordered the building of a theatre. When Catherine died, she had a magnificent palace consisting of different buildings with an excellent library and one of the best art collections in the world with 4,000 paintings.

Since Catherine’s day, the art collection has grown and the Winter Palace and the Hermitage buildings have survived all sorts of disasters. In 1837, a disastrous fire burnt out the interior of the Winter Palace and it was entirely rebuilt. In March 1917, the Winter Palace became the headquarters of the Russian government after the last Tsar abdicated. On 25^th October 1917, the palace was attacked and entered by the communists. It later became a state museum.

The Winter Palace and the Hermitage also survived the terrible siege of Leningrad by the Germans in the Second World War, which started in September 1941 and lasted for two and a half years.

OK let’s go in. You can see the magnificent staircase designed by…

5. Fill in the correct word derived from the word in brackets.

Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) designed some of London’s finest 1)_______(architect) masterpieces. He was 2)_______ (talent) in many fields, including astronomy, but it was as an architect that he became most 3)_______(fame). He designed 53 churches, including St Paul’s Cathedral, and during his long, 4)_____(create) career he served three kings and two queens.

It was after the 5)______(disaster) Great Fire of London that Wren’s most important works were built. The 6)_______(destroy) of large areas of London gave him the most 7)_______(impress) building still standing today is St Paul’s, with its 8)_______(beauty) dome and detailed stonework.

6. WRITING

Look at the photos of people on the blackboard. They told about their visiting interesting places. The sentences are written in Direct Speech which you have to turn into Reported Speech.

7. SPEAKING

1. Complete the dialogue using the questions in the list.

How old is it? What does it look like? What’s that?

A: Did you have a good time in Greece, Mary?

B: Yes, thanks. It was wonderful. The best place we visited was the Acropolis.

A: Really? 1) ____________?

B: It’s an ancient building on top of a hill in Athens.

A: OH. 2)_______________?

B: It was built by the ancient Greeks in 500BC.

A: That’s amasing.3)_______________?

B: It’s made of marble and it has lots of columns. It’s really beautiful.

A: It sounds fantastic. I wish I’d been there with you.

1. Now, in pairs, use the prompts below to act out similar dialogues.

1. Make up your own dialogue using the information of this lesson and your

experience.

III. SUMMARIZING

Home task: write about any interesting building or sight of our country.

What did we do at our lesson? Did you know any interesting things

for you? Did you like our lesson? Why/ Why not?