Insert Session Title
Pre-Course Tasks Introduction
CompletionDate:
You will receive this task upon confirmation of your place on the course. Please complete it and bring it with you to the first session of the course:
Course Introduction & Pre-Course Task (August 2016).
Aim:
The aim of these brief tasks is to get you thinking about some of the key issues related to teaching young learners before the course begins.
Time:
Please allow approximately 3 hours to complete these tasks. Also, please complete them on a computer.
Assessment & Use:
These tasks will not be assessed for a mark, but they are obligatory and will be reviewed by the Course Tutors. The tasks will also be referred to in various sessions throughout the course as starting points for several sessions.
Part One: Language Analysis and Lesson Planning
Look at the text below. It’s part of a story. Imagine you are going to use it with a group of elementary level 10-11 year olds.
1. Identify a lexical set in the text that you would teach. What problems would your learners have in terms of form, meaning and pronunciation for each lexical item?
2. Identify a grammar point that you could focus on from this text. How would you highlight and check meaning and form?
3. Outline a brief lesson plan for a 1 hour lesson using:
- this text,
- the lexical set you have mentioned in question 1,
- the grammar point you have mentioned in question 2,
- and other appropriate activities.
The text:
It was a wet, rainy day in the school holidays. Poppy looked out of the window at the rain and thought about her parents. They were on a long holiday travelling round the world. They said Poppy was too young to go. So Poppy was staying with her Aunt Bella in her funny old house with lots of rooms and strange noises.
Today Poppy was bored. She was all alone – Aunt Bella was out shopping. It was the third week of the holidays and it had rained all the time. Poppy knew all the parts of the house and garden now. Downstairs there was a big living room with squashy old chairs and a television. Next to that was the dusty dining room with its enormous table and chairs. The dining room was red and there were many old books in the bookcases, but they were not very exciting. The room smelt strange and Poppy didn’t like it. At the back of the house was the kitchen. That room was better – it was warm and full of delicious cooking smells.
Upstairs were the bedrooms. Aunt Bella’s room was at the front and Poppy’s room was at the back. She could see the garden with its apple trees and flowers. Today it was too wet to play outside. The bedrooms were cold and there wasn’t much furniture. In Poppy’s room there was only a bed, a small table and a wardrobe for clothes.
At the end of the corridor there were stairs. It was very dark in the corridor but Poppy decided to look upstairs. Maybe there was something interesting in the attic. She felt slowly in the dark and saw a spider hanging in its web. One step, two more steps, then she arrived at the top. There was an old door. Poppy turned the key – it was difficult. She heard a click and the door opened as if by magic. She couldn’t believe her eyes!
Part Two: Classroom Activities
Here are some activities types that are often used in young learner classrooms:
- Chants and songs
- Reading realbooks
- Miming and acting
- Team games and puzzles
- Cross-curricular project work
- Using videos and visuals
Choose two of them and:
- Say how these activities are useful to help language learning.
- Think of a particular example of the two activity types. Give a brief description of how you have used (or would use) each with a teaching context of your choice: think about age range (7-11) and level (beginner, elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, etc.).
Part Three: Classroom management situations
What would you do in the following situations? Please suggest 2 different possible ways of dealing with them.
1. You are reading a story to a group of 8 year olds but several of them are showing little interest. There are 5 minutes to go until the end of the lesson.
2. You have set up a speaking activity using an information gap, but the students are doing it in Chinese.
3. You are trying to give instructions for an activity but the students are talking to each other and not paying attention.
Part Four: Additional thinking – reflection on reading
In order to prepare you better for the course, we suggest you look at the following before the course begins and throughout the course. We recommend that you purchase this book so you have your own copy.
Children Learning English. Jayne Moon. MacMillan: 2000. ISBN: 1405080027
Please read these chapters:
Chapter 1 ‘Children learning English’
Chapter 2 ‘Do you like learning English?’
Chapter 3 ‘Are they the same?’
Then write a short 350-400 word reflection linking some of the ideas from the chapters with your own experience of teaching.
---- write your reflection here ----
Here are some useful websites:
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