First Teaching Lesson Plan

LESSON PLAN

Name/Surname: Mücahide Gülsüm ÖREN            , Özlem ÖNAL                                             

Institution/ Context of language teaching: Atatürk Anatolian High School, Prep-School

Material Used: Power Point Presentation, Hand-outs

Lesson Focus: The Present Perfect Tense

Learners’ previous knowledge:  Present Simple / Present Continuous / Past Simple / Past Continuous/ Basic Vocabulary Knowledge, Speaking Skills for Pre-Intermediate Level

Learner profile: A2-B1

Anticipated problems & Remedies during Teaching:

Problem 1: It might not be possible for the students to fully understand the implicitly taught present perfect sentence formation.

Remedy 1: Teacher will continue with forming sample sentences till s/he is convinced that everybody in class has grasped the topic.

Problem 2: Some students might not be able to come with at least five items to put on their own bucket lists.

Remedy 2: Teacher will give some clues about the topic and direct the students to be much more productive.

Goal of the lesson:

1-      To make the students use their creativity to practice a specific tense.

2-      To make the students’ practice their writing, listening, and speaking skills in a creative way.

Objectives:

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to

1. practice a new tense of the English grammar.
2. recycle at least 5 times the usage of the tense within a particular context.
3. talk about their own bucket lists.

Lesson Plan (The Procedure)

Stage	Allocated Time	Procedure	Aids	Interaction Pattern	Stage Justification
Warm-up Presentation	1’ 4’ 15’	·         The T comes to the class and greets the students. T wants Ss to close their books and put them away before getting started. ·         T asks Ss how their weekend was and what they did exactly in order to be able to lead the topic to a specific story on something s/he did at the weekend. ·         T starts talking about an imaginary event that took place in his or her life last weekend. In the meanwhile, s/he turns on the projector to open a PPP file with a movie poster of a movie s/he tells the Ss to have watched last weekend on it (Appendix 1). The movie s/he has watched is a movie named “The Bucket List”. T asks Ss if anyone in class has watched the movie by chance. If so, the S or Ss are asked to talk about it in detail and inform the others in class on what kind of a movie it is. If there is nobody to have watch it, T firstly provides the Ss with its content and wants the learners to guess what its title might mean. If there are right guesses, it is alright. If there are none, T himself/herself reveals the meaning of it. ·         Upon making it clear what a bucket list really is, T moves on to a pre-class prepared PPP. This PPP contains the imaginary items s/he pretends to have put on the list more than a year ago. As it is an old bucket list, T reminds the Ss that there are some items which s/he “has already done”. T starts going over the items by asking questions like “Do you think I have experienced zero gravity?”, “Have I ever made a rainbow cake?” etc. in order to create an interaction between the Ss and the PPP, and make the students familiar with the usage of the present perfect tense within a meaningful context.	PPP	T-Ss	ü  To make Ss feel comfortable and safe in the class ü  To raise curiosity about what would happen in the lesson ü  In order to make students familiar with the topic of the day ü  To demonstrate how and when to form a sentence with the present perfect tense.
Practice Production	10’ 5’ 5’	·         After completing going over the items on the PPP, T distributes some handouts (Appendix 2). Before being provided with the handouts, Ss are given the instructions that are to prepare their own bucket lists. T underlines the fact that they have to write at least 3 items on their bucket lists which were the deeds they really wanted to achieve and have done so. The other 5 items they must put on the list, however, should not have been fulfilled yet. 10 minutes are allowed for completing this activity. ·         Upon completing the previous activity, Ss are asked to exchange their own bucket lists with the person sitting next to them. On receiving the list of their partners, they should formulate questions and answers in order to figure out whether the items have already been fulfilled or not. They need to use the structures indicated on their handouts. ·         While the Ss are working on comparing and contrasting their bucket lists with their pairs, T moves around the desks and tries to scaffold the learners when s/he realizes that they are in need of some additional help. ·         Upon completing the previous activity, T wants some random students to share some examples from their partner’s bucket lists. T actually would like to hear at least one item from each student; however, this most probably will not be possible due to the time limit a 40’ long lesson brings along. ·         T dismisses the class. ·           ·         T dismisses the class.	Hand-outs	Individual work Ss-Ss T-Ss Ss-Ss	ü  To make the Ss internalize the usage of the present perfect tense unconsciously while trying to list at least 8 sample sentences on bucket lists. ü  To foster the Ss’ listening and speaking skills ü  To create a game-like environment ü  To be able to scaffold the Ss when needed. ü  To make the Ss learn something important about their friends while recycling a certain tense.

Contingency Plan: If the lesson finishes earlier than expected, T makes each and every student name one item from their partner’s bucket list by using the provided sentence structure. However, if there is no time to finish all the activities in class, T dismisses the class after the individual writing activity and collects the handouts. T prepares a PPP by picking at least one item from each S’s bucket list and works on it the next lesson by asking questions like “Who do you think from this class would want to have gone to Paris?”or “Who do you think from this class would have done bungee-jumping?” etc.

POST-TEACHING SELF EVALUATION FORM  

Please answer the following questions after you complete Final Teaching Task.

What were the strong aspects of your teaching? What are the points that you are happy with in your teaching experience?

First of all, I am quite happy to have been able to implement the whole lesson plan. Almost all of the activities were carried out with no rush, and this has enabled us to achieve all of our intended goals and objectives. Secondly, I really liked the idea of having been able to lead our learners to question their existing knowledge on the related topic, as I believe teaching is something far beyond just loading the learners with the curriculum. Trying to give them a hand throughout their self-actualization processes, for instance, is a responsibility of ours as well.

If you had a chance to re-do the Teaching Task, what are the things you would change? What were the aspects of the activity or your teaching that could be/need to be re-designed if you had a second chance?

I guess, one of the first most important aspects of the lesson I would like to change would be the introduction/ice-breaker of the lesson. It unfortunately didn’t work on the learners in the way we had thought it would, resulting in the confusion of the learners. We could have informed the learners on the upcoming activity instead of leaving them without a single clue. Secondly, the introduction of the idiom was a complete failure as well. Instead of providing the learners with a similar Turkish idiom and wanting them to think of an English version of it, we could have provided them with the idiom itself and expect them to guess what it might mean in Turkish. In this way, we could have avoided challenging them with an idiom which most probably doesn’t exist in their mental lexicon, but we would have asked them to recall something they know through their native language input.

What are some of the issues mentioned in your mentor’s feedback? How do you respond to these comments?

In addition to the above mentioned two weaknesses, several additional points have been critized as well. As this teaching was the final one, our course instructor herself provided us with some feedback. She critized my providing the learners with just the right and wrong answers during the T/F activity. As a result of this, some learners might have been left with some question marks on their minds, which is of course not a good thing. Apart from these weaknesses she also touched upon our constant switch to Turkish, which was in most of the cases unnecessary. She implied that if we don’t encourage our learners to try to speak in English, this means that we don’t have enough faith in them.

Final Teaching Lesson Plan

LESSON PLAN

Name/Surname: M. Gülsüm Ören, Özlem Önal                                                                  

Institution/ Context of language teaching: Atatürk Anatolian High School/Prep K

Material Used:           Reading & Exercise Handout: “Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?”, Signboards, Paper-made speech bubbles           , Computer, Projector, Board Marker, Sheets of paper

Lesson Focus: Reading focused integrated skills

Learners’ previous knowledge:

• Inferring meaning
• Skimming and scanning
• Expressing ideas clearly

Learner profile:  35 students, A2 Level

Anticipated problems & Remedies during Teaching:

• Problem 1: Technical problems related to the computer and projector may occur.

Remedy 1: Teacher will show the video on his/her personal computer.

• Problem 2: Some students might not be able to grasp the main idea of the video.

Remedy 2: Teacher will initiate some interaction among students to share their interpretations of the video so that everyone can get an idea related to the video.

• Problem 3: Some students may lose interest in the related topic.

Remedy 3: Teacher will provide a song about real beauty to appeal to their interest.

Goal of the lesson:

By the end of the lesson, the students will;

1. increase their awareness about real beauty.

2. develop their reading skills in general.

Objectives of the lesson:

By the end of the lesson, the students will have;

1.    practiced speaking skills through sharing their opinions about the associated topic.

2.    practiced listening skills via watching and commenting on a video.

3.    practiced skimming skills via a reference words and a T/F activity.

4.    practiced scanning skills through some comprehension questions.

5.    practiced writing skills by describing the positive physical features of  their classmates.

Lesson Plan (The Procedure)

Stage	Allocated Time	Procedure	Aids	Interaction Pattern	Rationale & Justification
Pre-Reading	25’	·        Before Ss enter the class, T places two signboards to the two ends of the class bearing the titles “average” and “beautiful”. ·        T avoids influencing the choices of the Ss, therefore, s/he makes no explanations before the Ss sit down. ·        After the Ss get to choose themselves a seat, T starts exploring what the criteria for the Ss have been in making up their minds. ·        Upon collecting some responses, T comes to a conclusion by telling that beauty is a subjective term possessing many interpretations. ·        Knowing that beauty has many different interpretations, T wants Ss to define their beauty perceptions with just one word by writing them down on the speech bubbles already prepared by the T. ·        T distributes the speech bubbles after giving the instruction that Ss have 2 minutes to complete the task. ·        After 2 minutes, T wants Ss to raise their speech bubbles randomly, and makes them read the words written on them out loud. ·        T also demands the reasons of the Ss for choosing their specific beauty definitions. ·        T directs the lesson to a related video (Appendix A) . ·        Before playing it, T gives the instruction that s/he wants Ss to note down the possible messages of the video while watching it. ·        T makes Ss watch the related video. ·        Ss are expected to share their opinions about the possible messages of the video. ·        Upon hearing some responses, T directs Ss to the related idiom which plays an important role in guessing the topic of the lesson. ·        T writes the related idiom “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder” on the board. ·        T inquires if this idiom means anything to the Ss. ·        T provides some possible interpretations of the idiom, if the Ss find it hard to come up with acceptable definitions.	Signboards Paper-made speech bubbles Video Clip A  computer with a media player compatible with “wmv” files Board Marker	T>Ss Ss>T T>Ss Ss>Ss Ss>T T>Ss Ss>T Ss>Ss T>Ss Ss>Ss T>Ss	·       The signboards are used in order to make Ss to question their perceptions on beauty. ·        Video is used for attracting Ss’ interest and attention to the main topic. ·        T-S interaction aims to keep the students engaged in the lesson.
While – Reading	35’	·        T moves on to the reading passage “Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?” (Appendix B) ·        T gives instructions about the following skimming activity (including reference words and T/F questions). ·        T distributes the reading passage and activity hand-outs. ·        Ss go over the text quickly and answer the questions on the first part of the activity hand-outs in 10 minutes. ·        T elicits answers. ·        T asks Ss to look at comprehension questions on the second part of the activity hand-outs. ·        Ss read the text in detail and answer the comprehension questions in 20 minutes. ·        T asks Ss to share their answers with the whole class. ·        T corrects their mistakes and gives feedback at some points.	Reading Passage Hand-out Activity Hand-outs	T>Ss Individual Ss>T T>Ss Individual T>Ss Ss>T T>Ss	·       Scanning activity informs Ss about the topic and leads them into the text. ·       T aims to understand via comprehension questions if Ss have read the passage thoroughly and mastered it completely.
Post Reading	25’	·         T tells Ss to work individually. ·         T distributes each student a piece of paper on which a name of his/her classmate is written. T explains that the Ss are supposed to write down what they regard to be beautiful about their friends’ physical appearances. ·         T collects the descriptions and picks some of them randomly in order to read them out loud. ·         Ss try to guess the people defined in the descriptions. ·         T elicits answers. ·         T delivers the rest of the descriptions to the people they have been described on them due to the time limit. ·         Upon every S has finished reading his/her descriptions, T wants everybody reenter the class and re-decide in which corner of the class they really would like to sit after all these activities. ·         T projects the actual message of the lesson in one line: “You are more beautiful than you think!”. ·         T dismisses the class.	Sheets of paper Signboards	Individual T>Ss Ss>T T>Ss Individual T>Ss	·         The activity integrates pre and while reading parts of the lesson and Ss are able to provide output. ·       The beauty perception of the Ss is being challenged via re-decisions.

Contingency Plan:

If the lesson finishes earlier than expected, T makes Ss listen to a song related to the topic, and the Ss are supposed to fill the blanks in the lyrics of the song (Appendix C).

If there is no time enough to finish the lesson according to the plan, T asks Ss to write their descriptions in detail and bring them back to T the following class.