Lesson VII -Talking about Family Relation By the end of the lesson the stu
B) READING AND WRITING: READING, FILLING IN BLANKS
• Recall posse
"your/yours," and so on.
• Understand and use "whose
OBJECTIVES
FAMILIES
LANGUAGE SKILLS A) LISTENING AND SPEAKING: EXAMPLE: HOW MANY BROTHERS DOES MARIA HAVE? FOUR.
B) READING AND WRITING: READING, FILLING IN BLANKS
VOCABULARY FATHER, MOTHER, BROTHER, SISTER, SON, DAUGHTER, HUSBAND, WIFE MY, HIS, HER, OUR, YOUR, MINE, THEIR
MINE, HIS, HERS, OURS, YOURS, THEIRS
GRAMMAR FOCUS 1) POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES: THAT'S MY FATHER.
2) POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS: THAT BABY IS MINE.
3) WHOSE SISTER IS THAT?
4) GENITIVES: THAT'S JUAN'S BROTHER.
5) HAS/HAVE AFFIRMATIVE/INTERROGATIVE
MATERIALS FLIP CHARTS OR BLACKBOARDS FOR FAMILY TREES
ACTIVITIES YES/NO QUESTIONS, TPR, FILLING IN THE BLANKS, DRAMATIZATION OF STORY ASSIGNMENTS DRAW A CARTOON STRIP OF THE JOSE/MIGUEL STORY
Figure 8.1 Outline: Lesson VII, Family Relationships
There are no differences between the content of Figure 8.1 and the extract from the syllabus, but the column on the left hand side of the figure adds an organizational dimension which makes it easier to read and which will act as a reminder for you to include all the elements in your outline.
Steps in a lesson plan
With your outline clearly established, you can develop your lesson plans by following these steps:
• review
• presentation
• practice
• application
• assignment
Review
Reviewing previous work allows you to check on understanding of the previous lessons and gives students an opportunity to ask for clarification.
In a fifty-minute lesson you should allow approximately ten minutes for review.
Presentation
Setting a familiar context is an important part of presenting new material. This step of your lesson should therefore be closely tied to your Review. Your objective at this point is to move your students from the known to the unknown.
Practice
Practicing new material requires guidance and control from the teacher. Exercises in this section of the lesson will need to be carefully prepared and include exercises such as multiple choice, substitution drills, true or false, and filling in blanks. You will need to monitor activities, checking that new information has been understood and that students are putting their new skills correctly into practice.
Application
Applying new material is different from practicing it in that the teacher steps back and allows the students to take control. Your students will have had time to absorb your input and they can now focus on their output.
Exercises in this part of the lesson will be more open ended. They will include role-plays, written reports, complex group activities.
In a fifty-minute class these three steps, Presentation, Practice, and Application should take approximately thirty-five minutes.
Assignments
Explaining assignments should not be left until the last minute. Give yourself time to prepare your students for the work they will be doing out of class. When your students understand what is required of them they have a better chance of succeeding and achieving the objective of the lesson. Your assignment should reflect the materials presented in your lesson.
Traditionally, assignments have consisted of exercises from the text. However, you may want to explore some of the options offered by a communicative approach and give your students a real task to perform. For example, in a country where English is widely spoken, such as Kenya or the Philippines, you might ask your students to find out details of upcoming events and to report back to the class.
In a fifty-minute class, you should allow at least five minutes for this step.
A sample lesson plan
Title Family Relationships or
Who's Who in Your Family''
Objective Students will be presented with illustrations of family trees and will be told a story. They will be asked to demonstrate their understanding of simple instructions and to ask and answer simple questions on family members, using the correct forms of possessive adjectives and pronouns.
Review Review assignment and materials covered in previous lesson.
Presentation A. Teacher tells story of own family and draws a family tree with cartoon faces, names, and relationships on the board.
B. Teacher asks questions of one student and draws a similar family tree on board. Sample questions will include:
What's your father's/mother's name''
How many brothers and sisters do you have?
Is your brother Vicente married'.' What is his wife's name?
Does he have children?
What are their names?
C. Teacher checks comprehension of class by asking Yes/No questions about the family tree. For example:
Is Juan's mother called Maria?
Does Juan have three sisters?
Is this Vicente's son?
Does Juan's sister Alta Gracia have two sons?
D. Teacher checks comprehension by asking individual students to go to the board and:
Point to Juan's sister.
Draw a pair of sunglasses on Juan's face.
Change the hairstyle of Juan's oldest brother.
Draw a big smile on the face of Juan's father.
E. Teacher writes chart of possessive adjectives on board:
my your his her
our your their
and uses them in sentences describing family relationships in the family tree which is still on the board.
This is their mother.
This is his father. etc.
F. Teacher describes the rule governing the use of the possessive form of nouns:
Add an apostrophe plus s ('s) to singular nouns. Example: Juan's sister Add an apostrophe (') to plural nouns. Example: The brothers' mother G. Teacher writes the verb "to have" on board, in present simple affirmative and interrogative, and drills students, using the family tree on the board.
I have Do I have _________?
You have Do you have _________?
He/She has Does he/she have _______?
We have Do we have ______?
You have Do you have_____ ?
They have Do they have______ ?
Practice A. Teacher asks students each to draw their own family tree. Then, using the example sentences on the board, each student describes the family tree to a neighbor.
Example sentences will include:
This is my father/mother/brother/sister.
This is my brother's wife.
This is my sister's husband.
This is my brother's son. etc.
B. Teacher asks each student to use the same sentences to describe the family tree of the first neighbor to a second neighbor. This time the possessive adjective will be "his" or "her" or a possessive noun form, for example, "Juan's."
This is his/Juan's father.
C. Teacher asks each student to fill in the blanks in sentences. (Sentences will contain blanks for possessive adjectives, possessive noun forms, and
"have" or "has.") Example:
1. ___sister is called Maria.
2. My mother____ three sons.
3. Does Enrique _____ two or three brothers?
Presentation A. Teacher tells the following story, using dramatization and pictures on the board to make sure that the main ideas are understood:
Two boys, Miguel and Jose, were friends. They both had baby sisters.
One day, Miguel's mother asked him to take his baby sister for a walk. And Jose's mother asked him to take his baby sister for a walk, too. The two boys met at the soccer field. They decided to put their baby sisters under a tree and to play soccer. When they finished playing soccer they came back to the tree. But they could not tell the difference between the baby girls.
"Which one is my sister?" cried Miguel. "Which one is mine?"
"Which one is my sister?" cried Jose. "Which one is mine?"
"I think this little one is yours," said Miguel.
"Then this big one must be yours," said Jose.
"Oh no," said a passing man. "The little one looks like Miguel. It must be his. And the big one looks like Jose. She must be his baby sister."
Miguel took the little baby girl back to his mother. His mother screamed and said to Miguel's father, 'This isn't our baby. Where's ours?"
Jose took the big baby girl back to his mother. His mother screamed, too, and said to Jose's father, "This isn't our baby. Where's ours?"
Miguel ran to Jose. "Quickly," he cried, "my mother says this little baby isn't her baby. And she wants hers back."
Jose said, "My mother says this big baby isn't hers. She wants her little baby back."
Later, Miguel and Jose sat and talked. "Mothers and fathers are very clever," said Jose. "They knew which baby was theirs. They only wanted their baby."
B. Teacher checks comprehension either by asking Yes/No questions, or by asking four students to mime the story for the class.
C. Teacher writes chart of possessive pronouns on board:
mine yours his hers
ours yours theirs
Teacher uses classroom objects to drill possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives.
Whose pen is this? It's mine. / It's my pen. etc.
Practice Teacher distributes texts of Miguel/Jose story, asking students to fill in the blanks. (The possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives will have been deleted from the text.)
Application Teacher distributes cards and asks students to circulate asking each other the questions given below. As students find a classmate who can give an affirmative answer to a question, they ask that classmate to sign beside the question. The object of the exercise is to see who can get all the questions signed off first.
Do you have two sisters?
Does your mother have two brothers?
Is your sister's name Maria?
Does your sister have three children?
Do you have one brother?
Is your father's name Pablo?
Do your parents have four children?
Is your brother's name Eduardo?
Does your mother have three sons?
Do you have a baby sister?
Are your brothers' names Carlos and Vicente?
Is your mother's name Maria Elena?
Assignment To draw a strip cartoon of the Miguel and Jose story, and to put the following sentences in the speech balloons:
Which one is my sister/mine?
This little one is yours.
This big one is yours.
No, this one is his sister/his.
This isn't our baby/ours.
My mother wants her baby/hers.
My mother and father knew their baby/theirs.
Summary of guidelines for planning lessons
• Build in student success by setting achievable objectives.
• Provide input before expecting output.
• Provide needed vocabulary.
• Teach all four language skills.
• Provide a variety of activities.
• Allow for absorption time of new materials.
• Teach from known to unknown.
• Cover the syllabus.
Guidelines for testing
This section looks at two aspects of testing: classroom tests and national examinations. These national examinations are usually set by the Ministry of Education. Practices vary, but in most countries the two most important national examinations are at the end of six years of primary school, and at the end of six years of secondary school.
Classroom Tests
The first and most important principle in writing tests is to test what you have taught. What you teach should in turn reflect your term goals for your course. In this way, tests check your ability to keep to your long-term goals and to transform those goals into lessons.
While the emphasis may vary, in most situations you will be teaching all four language skills. Your tests should be devised to test these four skills. While testing reading, writing, and listening is relatively straight forward, the testing of speaking, particularly with classes of 50 and over, requires a little organization.
The Royal Society of Arts Examinations Board in England has developed a format which can be adapted to meet your needs. First, divide your class into groups of threes. Then give each group approximately five minutes in which to prepare a task. An example of a task is:
The teacher is going to visit your village for a week. Ask the teacher some questions about her plans. The teacher will ask you some questions about your village.
Another example would be to give a group a picture or photo of a recent school activity? such as weeding the school garden, the official opening of the school fish pond, or the winning of a sports event, and to ask the three interviewees to talk about the picture.
Then interview the group of three for approximately five minutes. If possible work with another teacher on these interviews, so that while your colleague is interviewing you can assess and take notes on student performances. If no other teacher is available, you could record these interviews to play back and assess later. It is also important that the interviewer make sure that each of the three interviewees is given opportunities to speak.
When writing long tests, make sure that you sequence test items from easy to more difficult. Students suffering from test anxiety could be completely unnerved if the first questions they read seem beyond their capabilities. This sequencing of your test items could be done by first asking your students to fill in blanks or answer multiple-choice questions, then by including test items which require your students to write sentence answers, and finally by moving on to test items which involve writing paragraph answers.
Make your directions clear. In a classroom test you may want to check orally that students have understood the directions. Many Volunteers report that in moments of panic students misread directions and fail tests because of this. The sound of your voice reading the directions slowly and clearly can be calming.
Knowing the anxieties that surround tests, help your students by developing their review practices. The ideas discussed in Chapter Five, particularly the section on reading for academic purposes and the exercises to develop reading microskills, lend themselves well to the development of review practices.
Figure 8.2 outlines some basic examination strategies for your students. The most important of these strategies revolves around a planned use of time. When giving classroom tests, tell your students at regular intervals how much time has passed and how much time they have left to complete the test.
To get full benefit from the learning experience of tests, take time to go over corrected tests with your class.
The advantages in this for your students generally outweigh the inevitable discussions over grades which some students will raise. You can control this situation by setting aside 10 minutes at the end of the session for questions on grades. Clearly though, you will need to think through and explain your grading policy to your classes well in advance. It also behooves you to familiarize yourself with the grading system of your colleagues. The American system tends to be more generous in its allocation of points than other systems, and you may wish to adjust so as to be more in tune with local expectations.
For your own benefit, particularly when working with large numbers of students, make your tests easy to grade. Essay tests may be easy to prepare, but they take a long time to grade. So unless the essay format is required by the school, choose testing exercises such as multiple choice, completion, and cloze. The cloze test consists of giving students a passage to complete in which every nth word is deleted. However, you need not keep rigidly to a set pattern of deleting blanks when writing craze tests for your students. Here is an example of a cloze test. (When given, the words in parentheses are omitted.)
Rikyia and Fatima decided to (take) a walk. They (had) wanted (to) walk by the river, but the wind was (blowing) too hard. So they walked downtown instead. They met (some) friends near (the) market, and decided to (stop) for a Coke in their favorite cafe. The wind had dropped a (little) and the sun was (shining), so they sat at a (table) outside.
Finally, make sure that your students understand the school policy on cheating and the consequences for anyone caught breaking these school rules.
National examinations
The success of your students hinges on their ability to do well in the national exams. A high school diploma is frequently the reward for a whole family who have provided financial support to put one of their members through years of schooling. Your ability to prepare students for national exams is therefore an important response to your students' most pressing need.
Figure 8.2 Examination Strategies ALL TESTS AND EXAMINATIONS Read the instructions.
Plan your time - have a watch or clock with you.
ESSAY EXAMINATIONS