- Details
- Written by Susan Granlund
- Parent Category: English
- Category: English 7-11
- Created: 05 February 2017
TA lesson My Lost Dog
Subject: English
Class: 4 (age 10), 2nd year of English
Lessons per week: 2
Competence stages: 0-2
The children have been learning about pets in their books and, based on playing the password game, they built an ENV of pets in general. They have just been learning, 'It has...'.
AIMS:
CONTENT: to practise using 'It is..' and 'It has..'. Writing sentences in English, expanding vocabulary. For teacher also diagnostic aim - sentences and grammar to be dealt with later.
THINKING: to practise working out parameters to be able to give an appropriate description of something for a particular purpose. Building and using ENV as a tool.
CONTEXT AND CHALLENGE: You are on a motoring holiday abroad and your dog gets lost. What should you do? At the Lost Animal Shelter you have to describe your dog very exactly to find out if it is there. They won't show you the dogs at the shelter, nor will they ask you many questions. You must decide what you need to tell them.
The children made their descriptions, tested them out and worked out the necessary parameters. A more detailed plan for this lesson and the worksheet used are attached.
Teacher's comment: This challenge turned out to be too easy for the pupils, and the final task would have worked better as the first task. This would have been more difficult and perhaps led to the need for banks to help the pupils make better and more appropriate descriptions and would have helped them to learn more new vocabulary.
 1. My Lost Dog Lesson plan | [ ] | 538 kB |
| 2. My Lost Dog Pictures | [ ] | 610 kB |
| 3. My Lost Dog Worksheet | [ ] | 831 kB |
Comments
I agree with Kirsi, having both Ss worksheet and a teacher's plan is very helpful.
IMHO, the lesson is very well thought and has many positive features:
1. Having age-relevant context: situation with a dog
2. Using previously developed "pet chart", reflecting on it and in general reflections on what helped.
3. A series of challenges: first describe your dog, then developing a form, then describe more dogs using new tool. I believe it allows to constantly improve the general tool "HOW to describe", improve it's parameters.
4. Being explicit about ENV and reflecting on it.
Just one question:
1. why do you call point 2 (in teacher's worksheet) building the stairs? Isn't it actually a challenge (and point 1 is simply context)? In your case for point 2 you mention the task was too easy but if you gave them photos not cartoons immediately they would have basically failed with the task, which would bring you to reflection (what you did in point 3) and building stairs: reflecting on which questions were better and why and what else should have been considered. And then you would move to a new challenge and tool improving step - developing a form and describing dogs. What do you think?