Lesson Repairs (Week 4 Grammar)
Here are some examples of lesson plans from the U of Manitoba TESL 110 Grammar course with my proposed ‘repairs’ to make them better lessons:
Lesson 1: PPP
PPP Lesson Plan
|
Level: Beginner
Time: 1 Hour
Materials: Various
Objective: Students will:
· Use descriptive adjectives to write simple sentences about their best friend.
Lesson Sequence
Presentation (15 minutes):
· Give students an example sentence with descriptive adjectives. Highlight them in the text.
· Elicit more descriptive adjectives that can be used to describe people.
· Deductively teach the meaning and use of adjectives (i.e., placement before a noun).
Practice (25 minutes):
· Give students mixed-up sentences and have them write the correct order of each sentence.
· Circulate and offer error correction – focus on accuracy.
· Elicit some sentences on the board and offer additional error correction on each sentence.
Produce (20 minutes):
· Show students the difference between an adjective and an adverb. Focus on 'ly' adverbs so words can be easily identified. Teach the use of adverbs and discuss placement in a simple sentence (i.e., my best friend walks slowly).
· Assign exercises for homework.
|
My proposed repair:
1) The lesson requires a warm up activity to get the students thinking about 'descriptors' in general. I would tell a story or use pictures (eg. a pretty garden, a group of children playing, a scary Halloween scene) and start by describing something myself and then ask for volunteers to give descriptions. From the descriptions, write some adjectives or short sentences that they use in their answers. This introduces the topic of adjectives in general.
2) Then move on to the presentation where you specifically talk about adjectives that describe people. Personally, I would use a more inductive approach for students to look at the sentences, and determine placement themselves.
3) The lesson doesn't really meet the objective which is to 'use descriptive adjectives to write simple sentences about their best friend'. They are only correcting sentences. There needs to be an additional activity where they actually write their own sentences.
4) Adding adverbs into the mix, isn't part of the lesson objective, and at this point may confuse students, especially when it's done at the end of the class, and when students may be tired, and in overload already. Better to leave it to another class.
Lesson 2: Task-based lesson:
Task-based Lesson Plan
|
Level: High-beginner
Time: 1 hour
Materials: Various
Task: Write a short email to a business to request information about their services for a holiday you are planning.
Lesson Sequence
Task (25 minutes):
· Tell students that they are going on a holiday and need to email a company to inquire about a vacation package they saw online to confirm detail.
· Tell students that they are going to learn about how to use embedded questions in writing.
· Deductively teach the rules and provide some examples of embedded questions.
Teach (15 minutes):
· Give students an online listening exercise with embedded questions to complete in pairs.
· Check as a class and write the answers on the board – focusing on accuracy. Ensure errors are addressed and corrected.
· Task (20 minutes):
· Have students write their emails and hand in for assessment, which will focus on correct use of embedded questions.
|
Here is my repair:
1) Task-based lessons focus on the needs of the student. So initially it would be good to elicit from the students what type of holiday plans they would be interested in studying, and what they might need to do. If there was a need for requesting information about holiday trips, then this would be an appropriate lesson.
2) A task-based lesson would not really focus on one grammar structure for teaching. This focus is more on fluently completing the task, rather than accuracy of grammar. So it may be better to elicit from the students what might be contained in the letter. Would we ask questions? What might they be? How would we ask them? Write out some examples that students give, and ways to ask the questions. Re-write some as embedded questions to introduce another way of asking the question.
3) The listening exercise, while it may be relevant to the task, is more focused on accuracy and listening, and not on fluency and writing in the task. So I think I would change this exercise so that students have a writing sample of a email about holidays, in a worksheet activity (eg. gap fill). Before doing it, it would be good to call attention to the format of the email, and what else is required. You could also highlight again the different ways of asking questions, including embedded questions.
The students could also work in groups to come up with questions that they might ask in their email. This would help them prepare for writing their own email. Suggest that they try to use some embedded questions.
4) The objective of the lesson is for students to be able to write an email to request information about holidays. So the focus should be about fulfilling this task, and not on the accuracy of their use of embedded questions. More emphasis should be put on the form of the email, the ability to use ask good questions to get the information they want, and less emphasis on the use of embedded questions.
Lesson 3: Skill-based:
Skills-based Lesson Plan
|
Level: Intermediate
Time: One hour
Material: Various
Objective: Students will:
· Use passive structures when writing a news article.
Lesson Sequence
Warm-up:
· Collect together six newspaper headlines. Black out one word in each. Put the class into two teams and one by one hold/flash up the headlines. The team who guesses the closest word gets the point etc.
· Have a quick discussion on the merits of newspapers versus television or radio.
Skill-Building:
Write the short sentence from the worksheet (i.e. "A youth was sentenced for driving a stolen car."). Tell students that this is a news story and ask what they notice about the "voice" of the story (passive).
· Have students work in groups to find all passive voice sentences in the news story.
· Then, elicit form, meaning and use of passive voice.
· Have students complete a cloze exercise of the news story – filing in the correct form for passive voice with correct verb choice.
Skill-Using:
· Distribute a worksheet and have students fill in the blanks and answer the multiple -choice questions.
|
Here is my repair:
1) The warm-up doesn't really relate much to the skill that is being studied. I would rather read two pieces of writing, one in the passive voice and one in the active voice, and ask students what they think of each article. Do they notice any differences in how the articles are written? Do you feel more connected in one or the other? Is one more direct/forceful? Any other observations?
2) Then ask the class about the sentence structure, if it hasn't already come up in the observations above. Write two examples, one in the passive voice and one in the active voice, and describe them (using verb 'to be' with the past participle) and why it's called active and passive, and when you would use them. This is to ensure that students understand exactly what the passive voice structure is. Go back to the news article and look for passive voice. Ask for further examples from the students that they make up in the passive voice.
3) The objective of the lesson was for the students to use passive structures when writing a news article, not just fill in the blanks on an activity sheet. I would rather use an exercise where they are writing sentences in the passive voice, which would help prepare them better for writing a news article. The final exercise of writing a news article needs to be incorporated into the lesson which ensures that the students can actually use the grammar structure in the news writing skill.
No comments:
Post a Comment