last update 7Sept-97

Lesson plan

• Artist: Al Stewart
• Album: Russians And Americans
• Lyrics: International Lyrics Server
• Themes : death, dealing with stress, fate, responsibility, road safety, human nature
• Summary: The song tells of Linda, who was killed in a car crash one night not far from where she lived. They found the guy who did it, but he couldn't explain why . The narrator in the song questions the situation, but was told "Get on with your life, it is not ours to reason why". Left feeling vacant, he went to the local cafe to "get smashed out of my mind". The song ends with the words: "It's just one of those things".

Lesson Plan:

Preparation:

Get the lyrics for the song from the International Lyrics Server. Search for the song Accident On 3^rd Street.

Copy the words and paste them into a word processor. You can use the editing tools in the word processor to delete words in order to create a cloze passage. You might prefer to use a clozemaker software program to create the passage. One excellent program is Clozemaker by Martin Holmes. Clozemaker is a freeware program which allows the teacher to design on-screen or hard copy printed "Cloze" exercises for language students. Click here to download a copy of Clozemaker.

If possible, number the lines of the song. It will make it easier for pupils to follow class activities.

Make enough copies of the song in cloze version for the pupils in the class or let the pupils work directly on the computer (either prepare a word processor file that everyone can reach, or use Clozemaker's on screen test function).
If you have a local network in your school, speak to the computer teacher or technician about putting your files on the network.

Find a recording of the song that you can bring to class (optional)

In class:

Brainstorm and try to elicit vocabulary from the song - car crash, gravesite, preacher, gaze, vague, causes of accidents, abyss, ignorance (find other vocabulary your class may need).

Hand out the song (or pupils work on the computer). Pupils try to fill in the blanks.

Listen to the song: Play the song once. Pupils check the words they have filled in and try to fill in more words. The song can be played again a few minutes before the end of the lesson, after a class discussion, so pupils will appreciate and understand what they are listening to.

Go over the words of the song with the whole class, pupils filling in what they previously missed. You may want to use a transparency on an OHP to fill in the words, so the pupils can copy the answers with the correct spelling.

Analyze the story told in the song: (examples of questions)

• Describe the funeral.
• Who are the characters who appear in the story?
• Describe the guy who did it: what did he look like, how did he feel about it?
• What excuses were made for car accidents happening?
• What does it mean when we are told that the old man "doesn't even bother to try" anymore?
• Compare the narrator's way of dealing with stress with the old man's way.
• How else do people deal with stress?
• What is meant by the words "I wanna know if ignorance is truly bliss"?
• Why is the highway mentioned at the end of the song?
• Discuss the idea that the accident was "just one of those things"
• What do you think the narrator's relationship was with Linda?

Explain concepts: lobotomy and chicken eyes, Vikings with long handled swords, Joan Baez

Follow up activities:

• Compare the following:

Linda's funeral	Princess Diana's funeral
the preacher's speech	the eulogies at Diana's funeral service
the guy who did it	the paprazzi
the ways the following people dealt with Linda's death: the people at the funeral, her old uncle, the narrator	the way the following people mourned for Diana: her sons, the Spencer Family, her ex-husband, the people of England, the world

• Write a continuation of the story in the song.
• Choose at least one of the characters who appears in the song. Give him or her a background. Write about his/her relationship with Linda.
• Do a unit on road safety. Start at Amalnet's English Resource Center Road Safety site.
• Work on the poem Musee Des Beaux Arts by William Auden. The poem describes some paintings by Peter Breughel, which show "for instance: how everything turns away quite leisurely from the disaster". Life goes on even when someone else is suffering. You can use the painting Landscape of the Fall of Icarus as a set induction.

Vocabulary work:
words or phrases from the song that mean to get drunk: had a bit too much, get smashed out of my mind, waste myself away
words or phrases that show loneliness: black hole in space, dark abyss
expressions: bound to go, all over, to reason why, basically sound
slang: gonna, wanna

Grammar:
past tenses
passive
past perfect: had had a bit too much
direct and indirect speech

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Back to The Death of Princess Diana

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