LESSON PLANNING

Bernice McCarthy has also developed the 4MAT lesson plan, which is based on the Learning Cycle and learning style needs.

The 4MAT cycle can be used to organize daily lessons, theme-based units, or long-term planning. To develop a theme-based unit, for example, take a single theme and develop four sessions on that theme. Each of the four sessions corresponds to a step in the Learn-ing Cycle, and each session focuses on the strengths of one of the four learning style types. The four steps in the cycle are:

motivation, information, practice, application.

CONCRETE EXPERIENCE

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CONCEPTUALIZATION

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Each step in the cycle is an inseparable part of the whole unit. Each step builds on and expands the materialsof the previous lesson. We recommend devoting one lesson to each step in the cycle, but you can adapt this as you see fit. Volunteers reportdizziness and breath-lessness if they try to fit all four steps into one fifty minute lesson, but it has been done. It is much easier to fit all four steps into a double lesson. Alternatively, some Volunteers expand certain steps, and may in some cases spend two hours on the Information step.

The final decision is up to you. We can only say that a practical rule

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of thumb is one lesson for each step in the cycle. The important thing to remember is the flow and sequence of the Learning Cycle itself. As long as you follow that, the timing can be altered to suit your needs and the needs of your students.Let's look at each of the steps in turn.

MOTIVATION In this step, provide a concrete experience and shift graduallyfrom Concrete Experience to Reflective Observation. All of thestudents start here, but this first step appeals most toimaginative learners.

Your role as the teacher is to motivate, to engage yourstudents and allow them to enter into the experience being introduced. Then stu-dents are given the opportunity to reflect on that experience.

The activities which can be used in this step include problem-posing, presenting a poem, reading an excerpt from abook, looking at pictures, discussing experiences,answering questionnaires, listen-ing to songs, webblisten-ing.

INFORMATION In this step, students shift from Reflective Observation toAbstract Conceptualization. All of the students work through this step, but

this second lesson appeals most to analytic learners. Your role is to inform, to move your students from specific personal reality tothe theoretical, and to an understanding of abstract conceptualization.

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This is the point at which students link their subjective experience with the content at hand.

The activities used in this step include lectures, notetaking, deduc-tive formulations of grammatical rules, mechanicals drills, vocabu-lary expansion, and presentation of new concepts through diagrams, tables and charts.

In this step, students shift from Abstract Conceptualization to PRACTICE Active Experimentation. All of the students continue with this step,

but this third lesson appeals most to common sense learners. Your role is to coach, to organize materials and activities so that your stu-dents can test their understanding of what they have learned. They have been taught skills and concepts and now they are asked to

manipulate materials based on those skills and concepts. Students are then given the opportunity to extend what they have learned through selecting and individualizing their own experiments and manipulations.

The activities used in this step include worksheets, pair work, small group work, project planning, writing, creating cartoons, case stud-ies, keeping records, polling classmates, formulating questions on a text for others to answer.

Here students shift from Active Experimentation to Concrete Experi-APPLICATION ence. All of the students continue to finish the cycle together, but

this fourth lesson appeals most to dynamic learners. Your role is to evaluate and remediate. Students are required to apply and refine in a personal way what they have learned and then to share with others.

The activities in this step include gathering materials for projects and implementing project plans; sharing written work; critiquing each other's projects and being members of the audience in final presentations; and reporting back to the class on a project.

As you can see, the role of the teacher and students switches in the TEACHER/STUDENT ROLES learning cycle. In the first quadrant, the teacher takes a lead role,

planning the experience as well as the reflective discussion that fol-lows. In the second quadrant, the teacher teaches, linking the expe-rience and reflection into the concepts to be taught and then teach-ing the required skills and concepts. Don't worry if you seem to be center stage in these two quadrants. You are supposed to he. You are giving your students what the linguist Stephen Krashen calls "com-prehensible input." This means giving your students the chance to hear English in a context they understand. So long as they can toler-ate some ambiguity, understand the gist of what you say, an. follow

the main ideas, everything is okay. Their productive level of English is not expected to be as high as their receptive level. And it is the

receptive level that you are catering to in the first half of the cycle.

In the third and fourth quadrants, the students take the initiative and take possession of the skills and concepts they have learned.

They try them out for themselves and share with each other the results of the learning cycle. This is where you step back and leave room for groups and individuals to playwith the language.