This is the description of the lesson where 7 form learners (aged 13-14) are working with the TA Creative Grammar Technology. These learners have worked with the approach for two and a half years. The lesson is conducted by an experienced TA teacher who has worked with the approach for 7 years.

The lesson can be seen as an example of organising students work on practicing the application of their grammar models and discovering new verb structures.
The video of the lesson presented below is aimed at helping you better visualise how the work on the lesson was organised.

 

 

The description below is my view of the lesson and may not coincide with that of the teacher’s.

 

Lesson description before

On the previous several lessons, the learners were building their own grammar models on verb forms used to speak about time in English. They described grammar forms using the ENV model of description. Students came to this lesson with their ready models (see an example of the model here).

The thinking aim for the lesson is to find limitations of the developed model by practicing its application.

The language aim of the lesson is to practice verb formation when referring to present, past and future in English.
During the lesson learners are working with the following worksheet.

 

Lesson description after

The lesson starts with inviting students to share their views on the aim for developing their grammar models and clarifying the aim of this particular lesson.

The lesson is further built in a sequence of tasks that learners have to perform in order to both practice several skills and improve their grammar models.

The first task asks students to identify verb forms and explain their use with the description of the verb form in their models. It is important that students are using their developed models to explain the choice of the verb form in sentences. However, it is also important to notice that the first task is simply asking students to identify the verb and explain the choice of the particular verb form – the skills teachers often do not pay enough attention to and jump quickly to making students fill in the gaps selecting among possible verb forms.

The lesson continues with students building and guessing verb forms from their descriptions, again using their developed models and introducing any changes that are relevant (notice, for instance, on 12:13 on the video, the teacher helping student to identify the mistake in his model).

After practicing the application of the model, students are invited to think of possible other verb forms, which potentially can exist in the English language, by combining the features of already known verb forms. Task nr.3 is aimed at helping students to identify unknown verb form and sets the ground for the discussion of its possible meaning. It is not unusual on the TA lesson that students are making hypothesis about grammar phenomenon.

Only as the last task students practice selecting the appropriate verb form depending on the content of the sentence.

The lesson ends with the teacher asking students to make a brief conclusion of what they learnt during the lesson and put down at least one question that they still have about any aspect of the phenomenon under study.

During the whole lesson learners work individually and focus on applying their own models and developing skill of seeing and explaining distinction between verb forms via the ENV model of the description. Since there are many fellow teachers and a camera present on the lesson, students are a little bit shy to speak but they are involved in all the activities.
The role of the teacher on this lesson is to ensure students are using their models to do the task and to help students notice and correct mistakes in their models.

 

Overall reflection on the lesson

The lesson provided a lot of input for students to practice the application of their models, notice and correct any inconsistencies. It also made students extend their model discovering and adding a new verb form and building description for it via the ENV model of the description. So I think the lesson aim was achieved. Now when the first corrections to the model were made students can proceed with practicing skill of applying their models in various exercises.