Theme: The National Trust, the restoration of John Lennon's childhood home and the life of Lennon
Lexical area: Historical periods, talking about past memories and life histories.
Cross curricular links: History, Music, Cultural Studies.

Instructions for language assistants in italics

Classroom materials

Introduction
This lesson consists of two texts which explore the relationships between buildings and famous people who have lived in them. The texts given here focus on John Lennon and 'Mendips' where he grew up. The first describes the work of The National Trust on a 'mystery house' in Liverpool.

• The element of suspense and prediction or anticipation are important to this theme so do not reveal the identity of Lennon straight away, if you can help it. The second text sets the house in context and focuses on the childhood memories of Lennon as seen through the eyes of his Aunt. The follow up work includes an information gap on the life of John.
  
  It would be useful to bring a visual element to this lesson. The internet links will help you as well as the following suggestions.

1. Famous Places

If you have visuals of some of the famous places below give groups a selection of them to students to describe so you can get suggestions for words. Otherwise write the buildings on the board. Ask pairs to think of what they have in common and get suggestions of a couple of similar buildings in your host country.

• Ask pairs to ask and answer the questions together.
• During this activity introduce the key words:
  
  • listed building
  • preserve
  • protect
  • rubbish
  • damage

Task 1 Famous Places

Look at these places.

• Buckingham Palace
• Windsor castle
• Chatsworth House
• Stonehenge
• Brighton beach
• The Cornish coast
• The Lake District

• What have they got in common?
• Why do people visit them?
• What types of places or buildings are visited in your country?
• Have you ever visited a historic building or place? Where did you go?
• Have you been to somewhere unusual or far away?
• Have you visited the house where a famous person was born or the tomb of someone?
• What happens if lots of visitors go to these places?

2. Describing buildings

This exercise anticipates language they will need and also develops expectations. People usually associate this language with a stately home, not a small house.

• Put students in pairs or groups to study these phrases. Answer their questions about meaning or allow dictionary use and give a sentence as an example. If you have images from the previous exercise higher levels can practise making sentences about these pictures with the phrases.
• Discuss the questions with the whole class, but do not let it drag on too long. You will see from the second question if they have any difficulties talking about historical periods. Plan your next step based on this.

Task 2 Describing buildings

Look at these phrases.

• One of the Nation's treasures
• Authentic
• Historically perfect
• Frozen in time
• Researched and restored
• Very special
• In keeping with the period
• The right period
• Just as it was

• What type of place is being described here?
• How old do you think it is?
• What types of places could be called your 'Nation's treasures'?
• Who pays to restore and keep these treasures safe?
• Have any buildings in your town been restored recently?

3. The language of time

This task is very useful for preparing lower levels to talk about the text. For some students it will just be a reminder. However, bear in mind that even higher levels might stumble on the dictation of dates as writing down numbers is very challenging for all levels. Keep this task down to 5 minutes if you can.

• Ask pairs to look at the groups of numbers and say them to each other before getting choral repetition from lower levels

Task 3 The language of time

How do you say the following periods?

• The 1950s
• The 1800s
• The 1650s
• The 20th century
• The 17th century
• The 15th century
• 1945 - 1960
• 1700 - 1789
• 1300 - 1460

• Listen to your teacher and write the period that you hear.
• Check that you're correct.

4. A Boyhood Home: part 1

If you are able to print up images from the tour inside 'Mendips' paste them in sets on cards. Give groups of 3 students a set of images and ask them to complete the notes before they read. Get descriptions and speculation from the class.

• It looks quite modern
• It doesn't look very old
• It looks post war / 1950s / 1960s
• It doesn't look like a big house.

• An alternative is to use the pictures after reading to satisfy their curiosity and to continue speculation.
• If you do not have images of Mendips try to get one or two of semi detached houses in suburbia and clarify the difference between a semi, a detached and a terraced house with a simple diagram on the board.
• Pairs can compare their notes after reading and clarify any unknown words.
• You may wish to give a brief bit of background on The National Trust at this point. See their website for the numbers of properties and other curious information in 'Facts and Figures'.

Task 4 A Boyhood Home: part 1

Read and make notes under these headings

• The type of building (A semi, a modest house, a small house)
• The location (Liverpool, a suburb)
• The period (1950s-1960s)
• The person who lived there (a famous musician)
• The organisation responsible for the restoration work (The National Trust)

5. Guess who

Put students in pairs or groups to draw up a visitor profile tell them to include sex, age, occupational level, interests etc. They will find out in the next task that the house appeals to all ages and all types of people due to the sheer influence of Lennon and his perceived importance to our cultural heritage.

• Students might be close to guessing that it is Lennon or McCartney if they know about the Beatles, but do not say anything at this stage but ask them why they think it is a certain person.

Task 5 Guess who

Read the text again and try to guess:

• The type of person who might visit 'Mendips'
• The name of the person who lived there
• If the person is still alive
• How old the person might be
• Where the person might live now

Would you like to live in a house that received lots of visitors?



6. Find out

In this task the students get to find out who lived in the house. Get students to write questions to ask you about the person who lived in the house. The rule for the first question is that they cannot ask the name of the occupant.

• They can ask: Is he still living in Liverpool? Has he seen his house restored? Are all parts of the house open to the public? Etc. Can visitors take photographs?
• Put students in pairs to do the reading task. If the group are able to discuss in detail ask them to consider why people might spend their free time looking at other people's homes.

Task 6 Find out

Write 2 questions to find out more about 'Mendips' and its mystery occupant then ask your teacher the questions. Your teacher can only answer 'yes' or 'No'.

Read Part 2 and compare your answers inTask 5 to the text.

• Were you close?
• Would you visit 'Mendips'?
• Why? Why not?
• How do you think the people living in the same street must feel about so many tourists coming?

7. Your childhood home

The first two questions are based on the text and can be discussed in pairs. They help prepare the ideas for the third question which can be done individually. Do some example notes on the board for yourself and elicit questions about your childhood home from the class using the headings.

Task 7 Your childhood home

Lennon moved to 'Mendips' when he was five.

• Which parts of the home were special to him? (His bedroom and Mimi's room)
• What memories does Mimi have of him at home? (He played his guitar a lot and wrote lots of lyrics and poems on scraps of paper)
• Where did you spend your childhood?
  
  • Make notes under the headings
    
    • Location
    • The people you lived with
    • Parts of the house/flat
    • Colours
    • Furnishings
    • Objects
    • Your room
    • Your favourite part of the home
    • A memory associated with this home

Ask each other about your childhood home or a place you lived in when you were younger.



8. All about John

If you need to, use a whole class task with just a bit of practise in making questions you could give the whole class one version with question words as prompts: What, Where, When, Who, Which etc.
Then get suggested questions round the class and answer them yourself.

• Copy enough texts of 'A' and 'B' versions and give out to each half of the class. Put two student 'A's together and two student' 'B's together to write some questions for their missing information. Then mix up the class and put a student 'A' and 'B' to work together. They must not look at each others texts. They have to finish with a complete text.

• You could give the gapped texts and question making as homework preparation for the next class. They make the questions and then do the above sharing of information at the start of the next lesson. This could then lead to doing a Lennon song, like 'Imagine'.

Task 8 All about John

Yoko Ono bought 'Mendips' last year and gave it to The National Trust as a present. Yoko Ono was John's second wife. She believes that John was 'the most remarkable man that ever walked'.

• What do you know about John Lennon and The Beatles?
• Read his life story and make questions to find the missing information
• Ask your partner questions to find the missing information

9. Icons

This can be done in groups. The final question can be turned in to a group ,pair or individual project leading to a short presentation.

• If your higher level students use the internet give them the task of finding out more about The Beatles and their contribution to UK culture and world music culture and why was their music so special?

Task 9 Icons

The National Trust say that John Lennon is an icon for the 20th century popular culture

• Write a definition for the word icon.
• Name three icons of popular culture worldwide.
• Choose the three most important icons of popular culture in your country.
• Decide which factors make a person an icon.
• Choose one person and describe why they are important.

Internet links

This is a virtual tour of the inside of Mendips with excellent images and more information.
www.spekehall.org.uk/Mendips/tour_of_the_house.htm

This is an excellent site and resource with images and descriptions of all the Trust's properties.
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/

This is a source of biographies and images of The Beatles and Lennon.
www.merseybeat.ndo.co.uk/

This is a comprehensive resource with downloadable sound files, full lyrics to songs and lots of images. There is a more detailed biography here.
www.lennonworld.com

This site links to details about The Beatles.
http://thebeatles.com/

Archive links
Visitors to the UK looks at the UK tourist industry and the types of place that are popular with foreigners.
Reading houses follows up the theme of describing buildings and looks at the new living spaces in cities in the UK.
Teen tribes looks at groups of teenagers and their identity through fashion and music. Some parents thought The Beatles were a bad influence on their teenagers. This would be a good link to a study of Beatlemania.

By Clare Lavery