General Introduction
Topic
Nowadays
world which surrounds us with new forms of communication as well as new
inventions to improve our daily lives.
Subject
English Language
Objectives
• Recognise and use word-formation
process to form adjectives from abstract nouns.
• Comprehend general and specific
information in oral and written texts on inventions.
• Express opinions and promote
creativity, encouraging imagination.
• Express probable and hypothetical condition.
Development of the Unit
I would like to present my unit talking about different activities in the class instead of presenting session by session because I think is better to have a clear view of what we want to do in a whole and not in only one day.
So, my unit follows a logical teaching sequences which goes from Warm-ups activities until the final obejective and main task of the unit, that is to say, to produce a text.
Here you have, I wish it would be useful for you.
Warm-up: The first task in this unit provides
pupils with a group of pictures which show different inventions throughout
history and they have to guess the inventors of these things.
Then a second activity will encourage pupils to discuss about these
inventions and their utility in our current world. To Finish, pupils will be
presented the following video 20 Inventions We Shouldn't Live Without to continue discussing the usefulness of inventions. By doing so, the
activity will also allow pupils to express themselves and promote Communicative
Competence. Productivity of Science and Technology will also be highlighted.
Reading: In this unit, the texts will give the
pupils the possibility to improve their reading skills and sub-skills by means
of a series of guided tasks including skimming activities (reading for general
information), scanning activities (reading for specific information) and comprehension
activities (to work on a deeper level of understanding).
In this unit, the first exercise of the reading section will promote
skimming, then a scanning exercise, in the form of a true-false task is
presented, and to finish this section pupils will be given two comprehension
exercises, one testing my pupils’ ability to link by means of relating pronouns
and demonstrators and another exercise which allows pupils to widen their
vocabulary by means of explaining the meanings of phrases from the text. In
order to do this task a ‘Learning to
Read’ box is provided, so giving them
extra help to successfully complete the exercises, learning English in an inductive way which is, undoubtedly,
one of the best ways to scaffold the
learning process of our students. Finally a speaking activity is presented
through a discussion about the main theme of the reading, thus promoting
communicative competence.
Consolidation
and New Grammar Pattern: In the final course of the ESO Stage,
pupils must be in contact with the expression of conditional pattern. For this
reason this unit encourages pupils to consolidate and extend that knowledge by
presenting them with new aspects related to these grammatical items. The
inductive approach to grammar, scaffolding
so their learning process, will help pupils to extract grammar rules
through the observation of examples and to practice the new grammar items
through a variety of activities combining the more mechanical type of drill
activity with more communicative grammar practice, in order to expand pupil’s
grammar knowledge.
In
this unit, more emphasis is put on the second conditional than in the first one
leaving the third type of conditional for the next unit.
A series of exercises such as matching,
choosing and using the correct form is proposed. In a second group of
exercises, I focus on other ways of forming conditionals, such as using the
imperative. At this point, I will provide pupils with some interesting English-activity websites, such as http://a4esl.org/ or http://www.manythings.org/ where pupils will be encouraged to look for
conditional exercises on them.
To help the scaffolding of our pupils I will provide boxes to better understand
the use of conditional sentences, so they can produce logical sentences using conditional
structures
Vocabulary: In this section, pupils will not
only be provided with a series of comprehensive and interrelated lexical items,
but also they will also reflect on the
linguistic mechanisms which operate at word-building level, as well as develop
their strategies for vocabulary acquisition.
In this unit, the main focus is
on word-building, concretely on forming adjectives from abstract nouns, using
four detailed suffixes (-ent, -ful, -ive and -able). The first activity gives a list
of abstract nouns to the pupils who have to transform them into adjectives
using the given suffixes through my help and explanation. After students have
assimilated the new vocabulary, they are asked to fill in gaps using an
appropriate adjective from the previous list in the correct sentence. A second
group of activities is given to students, providing them with new suffixes in
order to form other adjectives. One of this activities has been designed
by myself using the Open Educational
Tool to make Open Educational
Resources http://www.educaplay.com/.
The activity mention above can be visited in: http://www.educaplay.com/es/recursoseducativos/1816567/form_adjectives.htm
Listening: Through a series of intensive and
extensive listening tasks, pupils will be motivated to observe patterns in
communicative situations. Listening subskills such as listening for gist and
listening for specific information will be practised as well.
This unit provides pupils with three conversations. They have to extract
general information in the first exercise, putting into practice listening for
gist subskill. Then they have to extract specific information in a second
exercise, promoting the other subskill within the listening task.
Productive Writing: Students will be prepared to articulate a
coherent and cohesive text in the shape of a written essay in a progressive
way. This will be achieved through brainstorming activities, followed by an
explanation of how to organise the structure and sections of the essay. Pupils
will also be exposed to useful help and expressions, idioms and formulae as
well as linking words to write the essay. Finally, a model essay will be
provided.
In this unit, the productive
writing stage is guided by means of a series of activities which encourage
pupils firstly to avoid Spanish structures and False Friends. Then students are
asked to correct these mistakes and finally they will be guided by
brainstorming questions to build up
their own ideas to finally produce the composition.
Summarising
- I have chosen texts and activities which I think are useful to fill the
knowledge of the pupils, using Open Educational Resources such as images,
websites and other tools.
- To scaffold the learning process of my pupils I provide boxes of learning
to learn strategies through the unit, so my pupils can apply their previous
knowledge to new ones, so they can finally assimilate new concepts and
structures.
So, I have tried to provide a variety of
activities varying from the easier to the more complex ones, promoting the four
basic skills, as well as consolidating the already known grammatical structures
and extending the new ones. Hopefully, pupils will find my activities
attractive, motivating and enjoyable.
