Teaching Unit / Colors / Total Teaching Time / 160 minute, four periods
Grade / Fourth Grade / Teaching Materials / Self-designed
Key Words / colors, color mixing, primary colors
Analysis of Instruction and Teaching Materials
Analysis of Teaching Materials / ◎Vocabulary:
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, brown,
◎Sentence patterns:
What color is it? It is ______.
Some things are ______.
______and ______together make ______.
Integrated Curriculum /
Materials and Resources / ◎ Book: White Rabbit’s Color Book written by Alan Baker.
◎Websites:
1. StoryPlace:
2.Kizclub:
3. Cbeebies:
Student s’ Level & Background
Knowledge / The target students are 4th graders. They have been learning English for one year. They havetwo periods a week. This is a mixed-level class. They can read simple words by using phonics rules. Students have known some colors.
Designing Concept / “Colors” is a common but interesting topic for kids. Students are able to see numerous items of different colors in their daily life. Colors are everywhere and strongly related to the real world.
Students may have many chances to know simple colors through interactions in daily conversations with teachers. However, they may not have opportunities to learn the relationships between colors and how to apply color mixing into making colors.
Therefore, this course encourages students to learn by doing. Carl Orff says,” Tell me, I forget, show me, I remember, involve me, I understand.”Initially, we “tell” a cute story to give kids the basic idea of color mixing. Then, we “show” students how to do color mixing. The most important is that students need to produce or create their own works.
Cooperative and Collaborative Learning create a positive atmosphere of learning. Thus, most of students’ works are done by pairs or groups. Students can benefit a lot from learning with peers. Discussing and negotiationsclarifytheir thoughts.
In addition, on-line resources are good facilitators. We make use of several websites to teach students colors and color mixing. Instead of doing exercises or drills all the time, students can practice and achieve the learning goals through the well-designed websites.
Teaching Objectives /
- Students are able to know and say the vocabulary of colors：red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, brown
- Students are able to comprehend and use the following sentences.
“Some things are ______.”
“______and ______together make ______.”
- Students are able to know the primary colors and color mixing.
Teaching
Methods / 1. Whole-language teaching approach
2. Audio-lingual teaching method
3. Total Physical Response
4. Content-based Instruction
5. Cooperative and Collaborative Learning
Instructional Assessment / 1. Reactions between students and teacher
2. Attitudes toward to the groups’ cooperation
3. Worksheets and self-evaluations (feedback)
Competence indicators / 1. Language abilities
(1) Listening
1-1-1 Being able to identify basic English speech sounds
1-1-2 Being able to identify basic vocabulary, phrases, and sentence stress patterns.
1-1-5 Being able to understand simple sentences and dialogs.
1-1-6 Being able to understand the main contents of simple songs and rhymes.
1-1-7 Being able to understand the main contents of simple children’s stories and plays by visual aids like pictures, puppets, and physical actions.
(2)Speaking
2-1-1 Being able to read the alphabet with the correct pronunciation.
2-1-2 Being able to read common basic words correctly.
2-1-4 Being able to participate in oral practice in class.
2-1-6 Being able to use simple classroom expressions.
2-1-9 Being able to chant simple songs and rhymes.
(3)Reading
3-1-1 Being able to identify letters of the alphabet.
3-1-2 Being able to read words by using phonics.
3-1-6 Being able to read and understand simple sentences.
3-1-7 Being able to follow the teacher or audio tape in chanting simple songs and rhymes.
3-1-8 Being able to follow the teacher or audio tape in reading dialogs or stories aloud from the textbook correctly.
(4)Writing
4-1-1 Being able to write printed capital and small letters.
4-1-3 Being able to copy the words previously learned.
4-1-4 Being able to copy or imitate simple sentences.
4-1-5 Being able to spell and write some common basic words.
(5)General Application Abilities
5-1-1 Being able to identify, read, and write 26 letters.
5-1-2 Being able to understand and identify some common English words used in daily life communication.
2. The Interests and Methods in Learning English
6-1-1 Being able to pay attention to the teacher’s instruction and demonstration.
6-1-2 Willing to participate in all oral practice activities.
6-1-3 Willing to answer questions from the teacher or classmates.
6-1-6 Accomplishing homework actively.
Teaching Program
Teaching activities / Time / Teaching Aids
Wrap-up / Sing a Song
- Sing“Colors” with body movements.
Yellow, yellow, yellow, say hello.
Blue, blue, blue, see a kangaroo.
Green, green, green, eat ice cream.” / 5’ / CD
Computer,
Smart board
Presentation / What a colorful world!
- Teacher shows the PowerPoint of the vocabulary and instructs students to spell words by using phonics.
3. Students ask the teacher, “What color is it?” Teacher point to one thing in the classroom and the students answer, “It is ______.” / 12’ / Computer,
Smart board
Practice / Pass the balls
- Students pass a big ball and a small ball during the music.
point at one thing in the classroom and ask “what color is
it?” and the other one who gets a small ball has to answer the question. / 8’ / CD, CD player, a big ball, a small ball
Production / Snack Time
- Every group gets some M & M chocolates.
- Students play “Rock, Paper, Scissors” in pairs. The loser picks up one M & M chocolate and asks,” What color is
he/she can eat the chocolate. / 10’ / M & M chocolates
Wrap-up / Each student gets a worksheet for homework. The teacher explains the assignment to the students. (Appendix 1)
~End of the first class~ / 5’ / worksheets
Warm up / Q& A
Ask the students some questions about colors by using the website “StoryPlace" and let students recall the colors that they learned.
(From: / 5’ / Interactive whiteboard, computer
Presentation / Story Telling
Tell the story of “Colors.”
“Some things are blue. Blue sky, blue eyes and blue jeans.”
(From: / 5’ / Interactive whiteboard, computer
Practice / Brain Storming
- Teacher writes down the sentence pattern,” Some things are ______.” on the blackboard.
- Ask a volunteer to say a color.
- Then, the whole class thinks of any things which are in the right color and fill in the blanks.
- Use several colors to practice making sentences until students get familiar with the sentence pattern.
Production / Story Making
1. Pair up the students.
2. Each pair gets one piece of drawing paper.
3. Each pair is responsible for one page of the story. / 15’ / 16 pieces of drawing paper
Wrap up / Show Time
Students share their works and give appreciations to each others.
~End of the second class~ / 5’
Warm up / Magic show
- Teacher dresses up as a magician and shows students three
- Students try to guess the colors of the magic water, and then teacher says the spells and shakes the bottles.
- The three bottle of water turn into three primary colors.
- Teacher switches the lids with different pigment secretly and shakes the bottles again to mix colors.
magician’s hat
Presentation / Story Telling: White Rabbit’s Color Book
- Use PowerPoint to show the story: “White Rabbit’s Color
- Show the cover of the story and ask students what they see.
- Tell the story and interact with students during the story
Practice / Story Q&A
- Teacher invites students to talk about what they have learned in the story.
- All the students read aloud the whole story.
- Teacher writes down the sentence pattern,”______and ______together make ______.”
- Discuss about the mixing colors.
Production / Rainbow maker
- Give each group a piece of blank paper and one red crayon, one yellow crayon and one blue crayon.
- Ask students to paint a rainbow including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.
Wrap up / Students explain how to make colors by these three primary colors by using the sentence pattern: ”______and ______together make ______.”
~End of the third class~ / 5’
Warm up / Find Good Friends!
- Each student gets three different colors (red, yellow and blue) stickers.
Blue stickers,
Yellow stickers
Presentation / Color Mixing: Sorting room
1. Show the website of Cbeebies
2. The whole class plays the game together and reviews the
ideas of color mixing.
(From: / 10’ / Interactive whiteboard, computer
Practice / Color Mixing: Mixing room
1. Show the students to the website-Cbeebies
2. Show the students how to play the mixing game.
3. Students practice this game for several times.
4. Students describe what colors he/she made by using the
sentence pattern,”______and ______together make
______.” / 12’ / Interactive whiteboard, computer
Production / Mixing Colors by Body: Sentence reconstructions
- Each group gets flashcards ”and”, “together”“make” and
- Teacher initiate a sentence, e.g.”Blue and yellow together make ______.
- Each student holds the flashcard that teacher reads and stands in the right position to make the complete and correct sentence.
- Once they finish, they need to read the whole sentence aloud.
- The fastest group wins.
Wrap up / Each student gets a worksheet for homework. Teacher
Explains the assignment to the students. (Appendix 2) / 3’ / worksheets
Reflections
Teaching students colors and color mixing is fascinating. In the first period, students reviewed simple colors and learned some new colors. Eating is always kids’ favorite activity. Having the privilege to eat in the classroom made them exciting. Students had lots of fun eating M&M chocolates. They even did not notice that they were using English.
In the second period, students read a story from the website of “kizclub”. They enjoyed making their own big books. Each pair was responsible for only one page. It did not take much time and students could practice writing in an uncomplicated way. In the end of the class, students shared their works.
At the beginning of the third class, students’ motivations were promoted while “the magician” did the magic show. They were curious about how the colors changed. Then, students started to get some ideas of color mixing via story-telling. Since the story repeatedthe same sentence structure all the time, students could understand it easily and also made some predictions. After this class, the kids’ homeroom teacher informed us that they kept discussing about color mixing when they were in the break time. They did the magic show to their homeroom teacher.
As for the last period, multi-media really helped a lot. Students did not only learn color mixing but also learned British accent at the same time. Students were obsessed to the sorting room and mixing room. They did not want to leave when the teacher announced the dismissal of the class. Thus, it would be better if each student had a computer.
This course offers the kids opportunities to learn English as well as art. In English teaching, we sometimes meet the dilemma whether to play games or not. Teachers may wonder if students really reach the learning goals. In these four periods, we tried to achieve the language teaching goals and kept the fun parts. Our kids learned efficiently and had a great time learning English.
Class:______Number:_____ Name:______
※Please color the baby bear according to the context.
【Hello! Everyone, I am baby bear. I have chubby(胖嘟嘟的) brown body and a big black tummy(肚子). Yesterday I overturned(打翻) the paints carelessly in the art class, so my hands turned to green and my feet turned to red. I wear a cute blue cap and a purple tie. Am I cool?】
□Excellent! □Good! □Go! Go! Go!
Color Mixing
Class:______Number:_____ Name:______
Fill in the blanks and color the animals.
1. red and yellow together make .
+ =
2. ______and ______together make purple .
+=
3. ______and ______together make ______.
+ =
4. Make your own sentence and draw it.
------
1