A Week Without Notifications
B1 reading: For a school project, I turned off the notifications on my phone for seven days. Includes vocabulary, six comprehension questions, discussion prompts and full-sentence answers.
What’s in the worksheet?
- 4 vocabulary explanations
- Six comprehension questions and two discussion prompts
- Separate full-sentence answer key and teaching notes
Trace the benefits and drawbacks of switching off phone notifications for a week. The narrator keeps the apps, misses a basketball update and develops a more selective approach to interruptions.
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Page 1 of 3 · A4 printable PDF
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Page 3 of 3 · Answer key · A4 printable PDF
A simple way to teach it
Before the lesson
Prepare the three reading pages and review notification, habit, urgent and interruption. Treat the school project as fictional; it does not establish a general claim that phones are harmful.
- Read once to find what was switched off and what remained available. Notice the repeated breakfast checks despite the absence of alerts.
- Use the six questions to connect quicker homework with the missed hall change. Identify the scheduled message checks and the option of urgent family calls.
- Compare answers with the key, then discuss which alerts are useful and how a group could communicate urgent changes.
Support and extension
Support by sorting details into benefit, problem and response. Extend by proposing a notification plan for an imaginary student, without asking learners to disable their own devices.
Suggested approach. Adjust the pace and number of questions to suit your class.
