Teacher's Guide - The Curriculum Project

12. OilDiscussionPairworkBrainstorm1. Elicit ideas from the students about each question for a few minutes. Thenask one student to read aloud the paragraph ‘What is oil?’. Explain that oilformation takes millions of years.2. Put the students into pairs. Ask each pair to spend 5 minutes making a listof things that they think are made of oil. Then elicit ideas from each pair.3. Elicit suggestions about things that use oil as a fuel. Here are some ideas:motorbikes cars trucks buses trains ships aeroplanes generatorsfactories power stations heating systems agricultural machinesOn Your Own4. Give the students a few minutes to think. Then, elicit possible answersfrom the students, checking whether the rest of the class agrees.The answers are as follows:A = CoalB = OilC = Natural GasAsk a student to read the paragraph ‘What is oil used for?’ Checkunderstanding.DiscussionPairwork5. Elicit ideas from students. Then ask a student to read aloud the paragraphon ‘Oil Consumption’. Check understanding.6. Put the students into pairs.Give them about 5 minutes toguess the order of the sectors,from highest to lowest, and thepercentage of oil used by eachsector. Then draw the graphbelow on the board WITHOUT theinformation included. Get onepair to come up and add theiranswers to the graph. Then askanother pair if the agree, and tochange the graph if not. Finally,give them the correct answers.Elicit ideas from students about why the US uses so much oil for transport.Most goods in the US are transported by road and air, which use a lot of oil. The railway system,which uses much less oil, is not as developed as many other countries. The US is a large country,so people often have to travel long distances. The US has a very high number of cars and trucks,with about 240 million registered in 2004, nearly one for every US citizen. Compare this withChina, which has 27m vehicles and a population of about 1.3 billion.The Curriculum Project ECONOMICS: an introduction - Teacher’s Guide41