Lauren Barnard
The lesson I will be demonstrating was designed in order to achieve three objectives. After this lesson, students should be able to: 1) describe physical characteristics in English (specifically hair and other facial features), 2) ask for and give accurate physical descriptions in English, and 3) understand and use the Unit 2 verb construction “have/has got”.
In order to complete this lesson, it necessary to come prepared with 9 character sheets. The character sheet contains colored cartoons of 24 different people with names. Additionally, one will need sticky notes and a pen to make character name cards that will be stuck on the forehead of students as they try to guess which character they were assigned.
The activity is very similar to the American game “Headbands” in which each participant wears the name of a celebrity on their forehead (using a headband) and has to ask questions to figure out “who they are”. In this version of the game, I have provided a chart of 24 imaginary cartoon characters, each of whom are named, from which I assigned names to my students. On their turn, the student would close his/her eyes as I wrote down one of the character’s names and then stuck the sticky note to their forehead. Students then had to ask questions using the have/has got verb construction about their character (ex. “I have got blue eyes?”). These “have got” questions helped to achieve mastery of objective 3 (see above). Additionally, all questions pertained to physical characteristics that are necessary for the mastery of objectives 1 and 2 (see above).
I made use of visual and verbal modeling throughout the lesson in order to appeal to each learning style. Additionally, students were allowed to move out of their seats and get excited as this was a fun game and new way of learning the material, thus engaging kinesthetic learners. I used informal assessment throughout the lesson as each student responded, recording whether he or she made proper use of the construction and vocabulary words. Lastly, I ensured instruction was broken down on whole group, small group, and individual levels as we progressed through the material to adequately gauge each student’s mastery of the required skills.
I felt that this “Guess Who?” lesson went pretty well both with my students and during the live demonstration. The fun, board game-like nature of the activity proved engaging to my students, while I was also able to monitor their understanding of class content. As with any lesson, I experienced some challenges in translation from paper to practice, and was I to do this again some improvements could absolutely be made.
I thought the activity was accurately designed for my target age group of fourth graders. While it gave them a chance to learn outside of a normal lecture setting, it also challenged their knowledge and strengthened their English vocabulary. In challenging students enough to create a group learning environment, but not so much that they were discouraged from participation, I successfully targeted their zone of proximal development. The characters themselves were very diverse and describing them employed every vocabulary word provided to me in a list by Elena, the students’ English teacher.
We completed the activity in groups of between seven and nine students. I found that I was able to better monitor and engage every student when groups were on the smaller side. Also, because the activity was designed to be fun, I sometimes found the students were too excited and at times hard to control, especially with the language barrier. While the activity itself was effective in achieving its objectives, my classroom management could definitely be improved. I had a very difficult time keeping the students calm enough that I could effectively demonstrate the game, especially because we were in a room separate from Elena. In the future, I would establish a more serious tone at the beginning, rather than immediately mentioning that we’re playing a game and then scrambling to calm the students down.
Click the Word icon to the left to find my lesson plan for demonstration #1. Click the Word icon to the right to find my lesson plan for demonstration #2.
Teaching Demonstration #1:
Teaching Demonstration #2:
The lesson I am using for our second teaching demonstration is one that I designed in the past for my Kindergarten students who were learning to read. I found, however, that the repetitive nature of the activity is very conducive to second language acquisition for young children, especially when picture books are used to foster a full understanding of the story. The lesson has only one objective: Given a spoken sentence, students will repeat it, matching the teacher’s fluency and prosody, with 100% accuracy. This means that, upon completion of this lesson, students should be able to read back a sentence that they just heard with identical patterns of rhythm and sound.
To complete this lesson, it is necessary to prepare reading passages of multiple levels so as to target every student’s zone of proximal development. Multiple copies of each passage (up to six) should be printed so that every child in the group has his/her own. Because this activity was designed to be completed during reading groups, it is fairly straightforward and these passages (and the desire to engage and challenge your students) are the only required materials!
This lesson is focused entirely on Echo Reading, a research-based practice that is proven to be effective in helping students develop their fluency, or their ability to read with speed and accuracy. This method of teaching also allows for increased student prosody, or student ability to read with proper expression. Because English and Spanish spoken languages are very different when it comes to the vocal emphasis we place on different syllables and parts of sentences, I thought this methodology in particular would help spanish-speaking students learn to better express themselves in English.
In Echo Reading, the teacher first reads aloud a sentence, and then students mimic the teacher’s reading attempting to match its speed, accuracy, and expression. For example, if a sentence is read in a very excited tone, it should be repeated back by the students in the same excited tone. The process of echo reading is really as simple as that, and can be repeated until mastery is displayed by every student in the group. This technique is a fun and unique way to build confidence in young readers, or new language learners, especially when passages with lots of emotion are included.
Having presented the Echo Reading lesson in class, I do think that it went fairly well and that I would use it again in future classes. However, there are also a few aspects of the lesson I would further develop or adapt to english language learners in particular. I have used this method to teach reading in the States ,but, because my internship was cancelled, I have yet to apply echo reading in a classroom of students to further develop their English. This means that there are likely some additional unforeseeable hiccups that I cannot, as of yet, address.
The activity seemed very brief when demonstrated live. I am hoping this brevity is because the lesson was too easy and simpler to conduct with adults rather than the target age of 6-9 year olds. I also feel like the lesson could be improved upon in the future if I were to print the reading passage so students could follow along better at their seats. This would ensure every student can see the spelling of the words with 100% accuracy, which is very important especially when learning a new language.
Some other aspects of this demonstration went seemingly well. Because I am more comfortable around our class, I was able to teach more closely to the way I do in a classroom full of children. I felt much more confident and enthusiastic this time around. Additionally, I was able to better monitor individual understanding as I transitioned from modeling the skill, to guided practice, and finally to independent practice. This transitioning would allow for students to understand what is expected of them and practice as a group before they must perform the skill individually. I will be attending my internship during finals week, and I can’t wait to try this lesson with my Year 2 students!