A Teaching Design of Module 2,
Unit1 In Search of the Amber Room (Reading)
Ⅰ. Background information:
Students: 40 senior middle school students in grade1
Class duration: 45 minutes
Ⅱ. Reality of students’ learning:
The students in grade 1 are active in thoughts and are curious about the outside world. However, they lack in critical and deep thought about a certain thing. As to reading, they usually lack scientific reading skills in doing reading comprehension.
Ⅲ. Analysis of the teaching material:
The topic of this unit is cultural relics. Students are quite interested in topics about different cultures around the world. This is the second period of the whole unit. As a reading class, the passage mainly talks about the history of the amber room (how it was made, sent as a gift, lost and rebuilt).According to the new national curriculum, when teaching reading, much emphasis should be put on training the students’ reading skills.
Ⅳ. Teaching objectives
Language objectives:
1) Students are required to master the key words and phrases occurred in the passage (e.g. amazing, decorate, belong, in return, less than etc.)
2) Students are required to learn the attributive clause and acquire the sentence pattern.
Language skills objectives:
1) Students are required to describe a certain thing by using the new sentence patterns.
2) Students are required to master two kinds of reading skills—skimming and scanning, and learn to use them in their daily reading.
Affect objectives:
1) Students are required to know the history of the amber room.
2) Students are required to appreciate cultural relics and understand the importance of protecting them.
Ⅴ. Teaching important and difficult points
1) Teaching important point: Help the students thoroughly understand the passage and acquire the new words, phrases, and sentence pattern in the course of reading.
2) Teaching difficult point: Help the students master two kinds of reading skills—skimming and scanning and learn to apply them in daily use.
Ⅵ. Teaching methods:
Task-based method & Top-down model
Ⅶ. Teaching aids:
PPT, pictures, blackboard
Ⅷ. Teaching procedure:
Teaching Procedure
Teaching Activity
Design Intent
1. Leading-in
(5 minutes)
Guessing Game
T (Teacher): shows pictures of some cultural relics to only one student (e.g. the Great Wall, the Big Ben, and the Amber Room etc.), and asks him/her to use new sentence patterns (It lies in/on/to…, The scenery there is…etc.) to describe it (the location and characteristics) without mentioning its name
Other Ss (Students): guess the name.
Using pictures to attract the students’ attention and appreciate the different cultural relics around the world. After the guessing game, the students are fully motivated for the class.
2.Pre-reading
(5 minutes)
1)Brainstorm
T raises questions: Have you ever seen a piece of amber? What’s the use of the amber?
Ss discuss in group of five and one S from each group gives answer.
T Collects answers by drawing a mind-map on the blackboard.
2)Prediction
Ss look at the title and guess what the passage will talk about.
Broaden the students’ mind and encourage them to think actively about anything related to amber, so that they can be fully prepared for the reading part.
Prediction is an important reading skill in doing reading comprehension, and students are required to master it.
3.While-reading (25 minutes)
1) Skimming: Ss are asked to skim the passage and find out the main idea of each paragraph
2) Scanning: Ss read the passage carefully with the questions:
How long did the artist take to make the Amber Room?
Whom did the Amber Room belong to? ......
3) Detailed reading:
(1) Ss answer questions that need deep thought.
Why did Frederick WilliamⅠgive the Amber Room to Peter the Great?
Why did Peter the Great send a troop in return? ……
Then T draws the process out.
(2) Ss are asked to rewrite sentences and find out attributive clause in the passage.
It’s important to get the students to read the text for three times. The aim of skimming is to let the students have a comprehensive understanding of the whole passage. While the purpose of scanning is to let the students find out some details in the text. In the detailed-reading part, the students should not only find out the details, but also go deep into the questions about “Why”.
4. Post-reading
(8 minutes)
Discussion:
Is it necessary to rebuild the Amber Room? Can the original one truly be rebuilt? Why or why not?
The purpose of a discussion is to help the students use what they have learnt in this class to think about whether the Amber Room can really be rebuilt.
5. Homework
(2 minutes)
1) Search the Internet for more information of the Amber Room(do it in group of five), next class 3 groups will be chosen to make a presentation by using PPT to introduce the Amber Room in front of the whole class.
2) Finish Exercise in the workbook.
Train the students’ ability of using the Internet for some useful information and their cooperation in teamwork. Students are required to self-learn more about the topic after class.
Ⅸ. Blackboard design
Unit 1 Cultural Relics
Try to use the following sentence patterns
It lies in/on/to…
It is located in/on/to...
The scenery there is…
It is famous for/as…..
It looks like…..
I appreciate…most, because…