In the World Geography Chapter of the Four Corners textbook, page 48, the first activity requires the students to match pictures of locations around the world with a little description of it such as “There are about 17,000 islands in Indonesia”.  The activity is focusing on letting the reader work on their ability to compare human-made structures and practice the use of superlatives.  This textbook is for designed for low intermediate students at level 3. This specific activity doesn’t seem to be very challenging for the students at this level however it does depend on where the student is in their English learning process. I also believe that this activity doesn’t provide the student with a lot of information that they can learn from this chapter.

Strengths:

• The pictures provided with the activity are very engaging and eye capturing.
• It is the first activity of the chapter and it starts with a very easy activity to ease into the rest of the information provided in the chapter.
• The activity does target the intended objective.

Weaknesses/Adaptations:

• The pictures and facts about geographical features from around the world may not be relevant to the reader.
  • The activity should focus on geographical features that are part of the United States such as “The longest running River in the United States”, then have a picture of the Mississippi River.
• While the activity does target the intended objectives I think that it can expand on that and review the use of adjectives that was covered earlier in the textbook because when describing a place we often use adjectives.  
• This activity doesn’t provide any room for the student to engage with other students about what they are seeing and what their answers are for the activity.
  • This activity should include area for more engagement with students such as talking about personal geographic features that they have seen first-hand.  

Adapted Activity

Materials:
Worksheet with pictures of geographical features and man-made structures from around the United States (Appendix A)
Worksheet with descriptions (Appendix B)

Objectives:
1. Become familiar with the use of superlatives with adjectives and nouns 
2. Become familiar with well-known geographical features and man-made structures around the United States 

Instructions:
1. Teacher will provide pictures of geographical features and man-made structures from around the United States and descriptions of those structures for the students to match with the pictures. 
2. After filling out the matching section by themselves, then the student can discuss with other students if they have personally seen any of these structures and use other adjectives that would describe them.  If they have not seen the structures in person then they can use other adjectives not used in the descriptions to further describe what it looks like from the picture. 

Rationale:
I believe that this adapted activity is an improved version of the original activity because I revised it based on the weaknesses of the original. The geographical features and man-made structures that they have to identify are places around the United States that are more relevant to a student learning English. I incorporated past lessons from the book, like the use of adjectives, to review and show how they may use adjectives when describing a place. I also expanded on the original lesson and provided an opportunity for students to converse with their peers about the structures so they are able to engage more and practice their speaking. The original activity offered a lot of benefits to students however, with the adapted activity I focused on those strengths while also trying to fix those weaknesses.