ESL WORKSHEET - History, Health and Well-being

LESSON PLAN FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

LinguaHouse
Mar. 8, 2021

Level: Pre-Intermediate (A2-B1)
Type of English: General English
Tags: Celebrities and Historical Figures; Coronavirus; Emergency Services; Health and Well-being; Health and Illness
Publication date: 03/08/2021

This audio-aided lesson covers the works of the pioneering Victorian nurse, Florence Nightingale. The lesson focuses on vocabulary, listening comprehension, and speaking. There is an optional extension word search activity to consolidate vocabulary (by Stephanie Hirschman).

• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet (American English).
• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet (British English).
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan (American English).
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan (British English).
• CLICK HERE to listen to/download the American English audio (MP3).
• CLICK HERE to listen to/download the British English audio (MP3).

TRANSCRIPT (American English)

Florence Nightingale was born in 1820. Rich families in England did not send girls to school in those days, but her father made sure that she and her sister studied history, mathematics, and science at home. When she was 16, Nightingale decided that she wanted to spend her life helping people.
Her parents were not happy, as they expected her to marry and have children, but in 1851 they sent her to study nursing in Germany.
Nightingale returned to London to run a women’s hospital in 1853. In 1854, the Crimean War started. Britain, France, and Turkey were fighting Russia for control of Crimea.
A government minister asked Nightingale to take a team of nurses to Turkey to look after wounded soldiers. When she arrived, Nightingale found the soldiers in terrible conditions.
The hospitals were dirty and crowded, and there were not enough medical supplies. Most soldiers died from infection and disease, not from their injuries. Nightingale worked hard to improve conditions.
She raised money from Britain and reorganized the hospitals to make them cleaner and safer for patients, saving many lives. She often worked all through the night, so she became known as “The Lady with the Lamp”.
After the war ended in 1856, Nightingale was a national hero. She met Queen Victoria to discuss how the army could provide medical care and food for soldiers, and she helped to train doctors. In 1860, she set up the National Training Center for Nurses.
Nightingale was able to raise money for her projects because she presented information to the government using diagrams. She developed different forms of the pie chart, which made it easier to understand how she improved conditions in army hospitals.
Nightingale never married and was in poor health in later life. In 1907, she was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit. She died in 1910. Today we remember Nightingale as the woman who transformed nursing into a modern scientific profession.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK in 2020, the government set up several large temporary medical centers called Nightingale hospitals.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/esl-lesson-plans/general-english/florence-nightingale. Accessed on January 18, 2022. LinguaHouse.com © 2008 - 2022. All rights reserved.