A few suggestions and ideas to help teachers and tutors when writing up a lesson plan
or when submitting a lesson plan here to share with our online community.
Remember to look at our Teachers’ Notes, too.
Page one has teaching suggestions, and
A few suggestions and ideas to help teachers and tutors when writing up a lesson plan
or when submitting a lesson plan here to share with our online community.
Remember to look at our Teachers’ Notes, too.
Page one has teaching suggestions, and pages two, three, and four
are filled with learner exercises.
Readers preview a story from The Westcoast Reader.
They look at the headline, the photo(s) and photo captions.
Ask learners what they know about the topic.
Ask them what they want to know about the topic.
2. Partner reading
Learners sit in pairs.
One learner reads while another learner listens and repeats (without looking at the text).
After the reader finishes reading a sentence, the listener repeats the same sentence (more advanced students can paraphrase after repeating the sentence).
After reading the article, learners switch roles.
If learners need more practice with spelling or writing, the person listening could also write the key words they hear (learners seem to enjoy dictation practice).
3. Spelling bee
Hold a spelling bee in class after reading an article in The Westcoast Reader.
Be sure to rehearse before the spelling bee (review the spelling words and definitions).
4. Make your own flashcards
Students choose a word from an article.
Write the word on a piece of paper large enough to read from a distance. Be careful with spelling!
A student might also write their word on the white board/black board or a large sheet of paper.
This can be done with a whole group, or with smaller groups. If in smaller groups, choose 3 words from the article.
Student holds up her card and chooses others to explain the meaning.
Find the sentence in the article where the word appears.
Students write down each word presented.
Teacher chooses 10 or 15 of that list for a spelling test given at the next class.
5. Word order – Jumbled sentences
Read an article in the WCR after introducing the vocabulary.
Students paraphrase a sentence containing information from the article.They are not to lift an exact sentence from the text.
Practice with simple examples first. Remind them to count the words.
They will learn, also, that different word orders might be acceptable, BUT some are better English (position of modifying phrases, etc)
Options: work with a partner and guess each other’s. work with a group of three or 4; write the jumbled sentences on the blackboard and everyone guesses.
e.g. Article: How old is a lobster?
Students write a sentence of not more than 8 words.
Student sentence: “No one knows the age of a lobster.”
Student then mixes the word order and writes it down.
Write their jumbled sentence on a piece of paper.
Below, please find specific lesson plan suggestions/ideas from some of the print editions.
ONE LUCKY DOG
a) Cloze exercise
Delete the articles “a” and “an” in this story to create a cloze exercise.
Keep the headline, photo and photo caption.
You could also do another cloze activity, deleting prepositions.
Ask learners if they have a family pet.
What kinds of pets do they have? What is the name of his/her pet?
Compare the different pets. Which pets are easier to look after?
Ask learners what the differences are between a pet and a wild animal such as herons (on page four) or the gorilla in one of the stories above.
For more conversations about pets, go to: www.esljunction.com/conversation_questions/pets_animals.html
NUCLEAR CRISIS IN JAPAN
Thinking aloud also allows learners to see what effective readers do inside their heads.
As you read the article aloud, pause often to say what you are thinking. Below is an example of this process.
“So far, I’ve learned _______ (for example: “the earthquake was huge, a 9.0, and the earthquake was in northern Japan on March 11”); “This made me think of _______ (for example: Haiti in January in 2010); “I think we will read about _______ next” (for example: about the damage”); “I reread that part because…”; “I wonder why …” and so on.
One type of questioning that learners seem to enjoy is dense questioning.
Dense questioning helps students to ask and answer different kinds of questions.
It generates comprehension questions about reading material while helping students become more familiar with the reading material by building connections to their own experiences.
SHIPWRE