Teaching large class checkpoint task 2
- 1. Preparation Level Intermediate (**Large class with varying student levels**) Lesson Length 45 mins Objective To learn the vocabulary of character traits Target Language 1. Anxious 10. Humorous 2. Brave 11. Lazy 3. Charismatic 12. Loving 4. Clever 13. Mean 5. Compassionate 14. Mature 6. Confident 15. Noisy 7. Foolish 16. Quiet 8. Friendly 17. Thoughtful 9. Greedy 18. Wise Assumed Knowledge The class knows basic knowledge of the English language. They know basic verb conjugations, most common words, and many grammar beginner grammar rules. Anticipated Problems Although the class is labeled “intermediate”, it is a large class, and will have students of each skill level, including beginner and advanced. Therefore I must be able to cater to the levels of everyone. Also, since this is a big classroom, I will have to work harder to maintain the attention of the students. Solutions Arrange students into predetermined groups. For some activities, I will place all the beginner students into a group, all the intermediate into another, and all the advanced students into one of their own. This way, I can selectively choose activities for each group depending on their skill level. For other activities, I will try to divide up the advanced students and place them into separate groups, this way they can help answer the weaker students’ questions and guide the groups. Preparation and Aids Prepare a PowerPoint with images of different people who display an individual character trait accurately. E.g. on a slide with the word “humorous” there will be a person making every else laugh, possibly a famous comedian. Also on the slide the word “gracioso” (Spanish for “humorous”) will be displayed in case the student portrays the image as ambiguous. (Continued on Page 2)
- 2. Lesson Plan Stage Activity Interaction Timing 1 Warm-up: Prompt the class with the question, “What type of person are you” and have them write a paragraph on a piece of paper without knowing that the lesson plan is about character traits yet. T-S 3 mins 2 Presentation: Ask anyone if they know what a character trait is. If they don’t know, tell them in Spanish (rasgo de personalidad) they will all exhale in understanding. Explain to them in English the rest of the presentation and what they are (Although they may already know in Spanish, it’s good for them to hear an explanation in English) T-S 4 mins 3 PowerPoint: Show the students the PowerPoint I designed, which has 20 preselected character traits, along with a picture of a person representing the trait and also a Spanish translation included to rule out ambiguity. T-S 9 mins 4 Practice: Drilling: Go over the PowerPoint, this time without the English and Spanish subtitles, and tell them to say aloud which words the pictures represent. Do a few rounds of this. S-T 4 mins 5 Warm-up Exchange: Tell the students to switch with a partner the warm-up paragraph that each person has written. Now once the student has his/her partner’s paper, they must circle all the character traits that the person unknowingly wrote down for the warm-up activity and add 3 more synonymous character traits to match the ones the first person initially wrote down. After, they must switch back papers so they both have their original copy, and write a new paragraph describing their personality traits, this time adding many more new words they just learned. S-S PW 10 mins 6 Cloze handout: Give them a handout with sentences with missing words where they need to accurately fill in character traits. S-S 5 mins 7 Production: Have the students get into small groups and talk about the character traits of their parents amongst each other. S-S GW 8 mins 8 Poll: Elicit from students their most admired character trait. On the board I will have a tally of the most common ones. S-T 2 mins