Where the hell is Matt?

1. Ask your students if they can name all of the continents in English and find out which ones they have been to.

2. Put your students into small groups and give out copies of the worksheet below (36 geographical locations). Find out if anyone a) has visited any of the places on the worksheet, b) knows anyone who has visited the places or c) knows anything about the places.

36-geographical-locations.doc

3. Encourage your students not to spend too much time on the obvious ones (London, for example).

4. Tell your students that they are going to see a YouTube video in which a man called Matt dances in all 36 locations. After getting them to put down their pens or pencils show them the following clip:








5. Find out if anyone knows the story of Matt Harding, the man in the video (don’t worry at this stage if no one knows anything about him).

6. Refer your students back to the worksheets that they completed. Play the clip a second time and this time make use of the pause button to stop the video whenever someone is able to say something about the geographical locations. Your students may now be able to offer additional information about the places now that they have been able to see them.

Follow up possibility 1
For homework, allow each student to choose a different place from the clip and carry out a webquest on it for the next day. They could prepare either a poster, report or presentation. There are a lot of possibilities for interesting assignments:

•Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat.
•Machu Picchu is probably the most familiar symbol of the Inca Empire.
•Area 51 is a highly secretive US military base that is often the subject of UFO conspiracy theories.
•The Routeburn Track was named one of the top eleven trails in the world by the National Geographic Adventure Magazine in May 2005.
•Neko Harbor is one of only two venues used for cruise ships to stop on the continent of Antarctica.
If you are going to get students to present their findings to the rest of the class, you could allow them access to an atlas or even better - Google Earth. This would add a visual aspect to their presentations.

Follow up possibility 2
Get your students to imagine they are going to interview Matt Harding (the man in the video clip). Get them to think of 6 questions each while they watch his video again.

Matt’s story, as well as an extensive list of FAQs can be found at his own website: wherethehellismatt.com. Students could be directed to this site to obtain the answers to these questions themselves for homework. If any questions remain unanswered, why not drop him a line - he includes his email address on his site.

Sample FAQs

•How do you afford all this travel?
•How long did it take you to make the video?
•Where did you learn to dance?
•How did you get the kids in Rwanda to dance with you?
•Why didn’t you get stung by the jellyfish in Palau?