• Granlund
• English
• 12-15
• vocabulary

TUESDAY DETECTIVES: Describing, reasoning and questioning in English

Subject: English (EFL)

Grade: 5th and 6th (3 - 4 years of English)

Teacher: Susan Granlund

Competence Stages: 0 - 1      From Can I? to What are we talking about?

These are a series of three lessons based on a picture from the book, 'Tuesday' by David Weisner. The overall challenge is for the pupils to find out what happened from the evidence in the picture. The first two lessons follow the routine See - Think - Wonder in order to give the pupils a chance to learn and become familiar with the English vocabulary and structures necessary for talking about the situation and to give them the impetus to observe the details of the picture closely. This routine is also diagnostic and gaps in vocabulary and grammar knowledge emerge and banks of words and questions are made to be used later. The third lesson is playing the Yes/No game to find out exactly what happened. This also involves sorting and thinking of a strategy to ask relevant, strong questions. The aims of the lessons were as follows:

Content Aim: Diagnostic + expanding vocabulary, phrases and use of structure, particularly the formation of Yes/No questions. Discussion, speaking, listening and writing in English.

Thinking Aim: To find the important elements of a situation through verbalizing thinking, practising exact description of a scene, reasoning and questioning, and finally looking for a strategy to help find strong questions to find the solution to the mystery of what happened. Using the observation and strategies from these tasks for further creative work (See possible follow-ups in the attachment on the series of lessons.)