What drives a person to step off a capsule 39 kilometers above Earth, knowing they could die within 15 seconds if anything goes wrong? This 90-minute lesson takes students inside the mind of Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian skydiver who broke the speed of sound with his own body. Inspired by two authentic video sources – CBS News Watch: New footage of Fearless Felix space jump and BBC Studios: Jumping From Space! – Red Bull Space Dive – BBC – students first watch a high-stakes jump video and then an interview where Felix reveals his five years of preparation, his violent flat spin, his breakdown inside the suit, and his famous “breathing moment” before stepping into the unknown.
Students will develop the following skills through these tasks:
- Video analysis – sharpening visual observation, making logical inferences, and backing up answers with on-screen evidence
- Vocabulary matching – building a working vocabulary of essential terms like hostile, supersonic, and flat spinning
- Interview listening – extracting specific information from authentic speech and grasping main ideas without subtitles
- Group discussion – voicing opinions clearly, defending personal views, and weaving target vocabulary into natural conversation
- Idioms in action – putting idiomatic phrases such as ups and downs, bumps in the road, to set the benchmark, to be a daredevil into practical real-sentence use
- Mini research presentation – finding reliable information, organizing it clearly, and delivering a confident 3-5 minute talk
Your students will not forget Felix Baumgartner – and they will not forget this lesson.
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Teach English through extreme adventure, space exploration, and the limits of human courage.
