Last Chance Tourism: Travel or Trouble? – ESL Lesson Plan

As glaciers melt, coral reefs die, and sea levels rise, more travelers than ever are rushing to see disappearing destinations before it’s too late. But here’s the paradox: the airplanes they fly on are making the problem worse. This lesson plan, inspired by a CBS Mornings news report on tourists flocking to natural wonders being affected by climate change, takes students inside this real-world dilemma through an authentic video report from Iceland, where a former dairy farmer now guides visitors through melting ice caves.

What skills will students develop?

• Listening comprehension – through watching an authentic CBS Mornings news report and completing gist and detailed comprehension tasks
• Speaking fluency – through lead-in discussions, partner debates, and small group conversations about personal travel choices and environmental responsibility
• Vocabulary acquisition – through matching exercises, gap-fill activities, and discussion questions featuring 20+ topic-specific words and collocations such as recede, witness, stunning, alter, boom, appreciation, transatlantic, and get a kick out of
• Grammar accuracy – through targeted preposition exercises focusing on collocations like interest in, prevent from, turn into, serious about, and die of
• Writing skills – through an extension activity where students describe their own “last chance destination” using target vocabulary
• Critical thinking – through analyzing the paradox of last chance tourism and forming reasoned arguments about personal and collective responsibility

This lesson plan transforms a pressing environmental paradox into an engaging, skill-rich learning experience that your students won’t forget.