Teaching plan to “A Student of African Wildlife”
Unit 1 of PEP English Book 4
1. Teaching Contents Analysis
·Topic: Women of Achievement
·Analysis:
Ahead of this unit, the students have learnt how to describe and analyze a person in Unit 5 Book1 “Nelson Mandela – a modern hero”. Therefore, it’s easy for them to understand the general idea of the text.
This text named “A Student of African Wildlife” mainly tells us the story of a great woman scientist named Jane Goodall. This lesson is the first one of the unit, consisting of four parts: 1. Warming up, 2. Reading and Comprehension and 3. Discussion and Consolidation. The text is the most important teaching material in this lesson, which extends the main topic “Women of Achievement” and contains most of the vocabulary and grammar points that students should learn in this unit.
2. Teaching Aims
According to the combination of the New Curriculum Standards of High School English, Grade one students’ English level and their mentality development, I set my 3D teaching aims:
1. Knowledge and skill aims:
a. Skimming and scanning skills: understanding the main idea; scanning for the needed information; and grasp the details;
b. to improve the students’ organizing and using skills of English as the second language.
2. Moral culture aims:
a. Strengthen the sense of environmental protection; let the students understand Jane Goodall’s career and interpret the importance of her career and achievements. let students understand and respect wildlife;
b. Through Jane Goodall’s spirits, enable and encourage students to behave like her; and furthermore, to establish correct value of gender and society.
3. Learning methods aims:
a. the ability of self-learning and cooperative learning method; and use such kind of ability to gain and deal with language information.
b. foster the students’ questioning spirit to improve their ability of analyzing and solving problems.
3. Teaching Methods
a. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT):
Language is used for communication. It’s learner-centered and emphasizes communication and real-life situations.
b. Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT):
A task resembles activities which our students or other people carry out in everyday life, Learners should be given opportunities to reflect on what they have learned and how well they are doing.
c. Computer Assisted Language Teaching (CALT)
Language learning needs a context, which can help the learners to understand the language and then can product comprehensible output, so computer has the advantages to make the materials attractive.
4. Important and Difficult Points
a. Understanding of the deep meaning of Jane Goodall’s spirits.
b. Understanding the sense of “All men are created equal”. i.e. the equality of men and women.
c. Difficult language problems:
subject-verb agreement; –ing form, the usage of “spend” and inversion.
5. Teaching Procedures:
Step 1. Warming up and lead-in (5 mins)
“Interest is the best teacher.” Therefore, at the very beginning of the class, I should SPARK the students’ mind to focus on the centre topic “women of achievement”
1. Show 4 pictures of great women of the world, such as Ms. Song Qingling, J.K. Rowling (author of Harry Potter), Margaret Thatcher and the last one Jane Goodall.
2. Let students guess who they are and what they achieve.
After this, the students will be eager to know who Ms. Jane Goodall is and this is the very time to naturally lead the class into Step 2
Step 2. Reading for information: Skimming and scanning ( 9 mins totally)
In this step, I use Task-based Language Teaching method, which can give students a clear and specific purpose while skimming and scanning the context.
Task 1 General idea (3 mins)
Prediction is an important skill in grasping the idea of a contest. Consequently, I let the students predict the general idea before they read in this task.
a.Read the title and enjoy the two pictures of Ms. Goodall on Page 2 to predict the general meaning of the text.
b.Then skimming Para1 & 3 as fast as possible and summarize the general idea:
The passage is mainly about how Jane Goodle worked with chimps in their environment and help people understand and respect the life of these animals.
Task 2 Main idea of each paragraph. (6 mins)
Cooperative learning can raise the students interest and create an atmosphere of achievement. Based on this theory, I divide the whole class into 4 groups to skim the whole text and get the main idea of each paragraph.
Para 1. How the group followed Jane’s way of studying chimps in the wild.
Para 2. What Jane discovered about chimps
Para 3. How Jane tries to protect the lives of chimps in their natural habitat.
Para 4. Jane Goodall’s achievements
Step 3. Reading for comprehension (5 mins)
The purpose of reading is to get the correct and useful information. Students should not only have a high speed of reading but also have a correct understanding of details. Therefore the following practices on Page 3 can help check the situation.
Choose the correct answers after reading the passage.
1). What did the group do first in the morning? They____________.
A went into the forest slowly
B left the chimp family sleeping in a tree
C observed the family of chimps wake up
D helped people understand the behavior of the chimps
2). Why did Jane go to Africa to study chimps in the wild? Because she wanted ________.
A to work with them in their own environment
B to prove the way people think about chimps was wrong
C to discover what chimps eat
D to observe a chimp family
3). Jane was permitted to begin her work after ___________.
A the chimp family woke up B she lived in the forest
C her mother came to support her D she arrived at Gombe
4) .The purpose of her study was to ___________.
A watch the wild chimps in cages B gain a doctor’s degree
C understand and respect the lives of chimps D live in the forest as men can
Step 4 Solving difficult language problems through reading (10 mins)
It’s important for language learners to learn important rules of grammar and use these rules to solve problems in reality. In the previous process of reading, the students must come across some difficult language obstacles, so it’s necessary for us to discuss and explain. This period of time belongs to students. They can ask any questions they come across in the process of learning. The purpose of this is improving the students “questioning spirit” and dealing with the difficulties.
e.g. 1. Let students find out the “–ing” forms and translate the sentences
e.g. a. Following Jane’s way of studying chimps, our group are all going to visit them…
我们一行人准备按照简研究黑猩猩的方法去拜访他们。
b. Watching a family of chimps wake up is our first activity of the day.
我们当天的首项任务就是观察黑猩猩一家是如何醒来的。
c. This means going back to the place where we left the family sleeping in a tree…
这意味着我们要回到前一天晚上我们离开时黑猩猩一家睡觉的大树旁。
2. Let students summarize the usages of “spend” and make up sentences in their own words.
i.e. spend … on sth; spend … (in) doing…
3. Pay attention to the following differences (subject-verb agreement)
Our group aregoing to visit them in the forest.
Jane warns us that our group is going to be very tired and dirty…
4. Inversion:
Only after her mother came to help her for the first few months was she allowed to begin her project.
Practice: translate the proverb into Chinese
Only when all contribute their firewood, can they build up a strong fire.
众人拾柴火焰高。
Step 5 Consolidation ( 16 mins totally)
Language is learnt by communicating. It is my job to create an atmosphere for students to use the language. Here I design 3 activities
1. Summary: fill in the blanks without referring to the context and then retell the whole text. (3 mins)
Jane Goodall has studied the chimps for many years in Africa and helped people understand how much they behave like human. Jane was determined to work with animals in their own environment. She spent many years observing and recording their daily activities.
For 40 years, Jane has been helping the rest of the world understand and respect the life of these animals. She inspires those who want to cheer the achievements of women.
Discussion or debate is an easy way to inspire new ideas and an excellent chance to practice English in a cooperative learning atmosphere. During the following two activities, The students will deepen their understanding of Ms. Goodall’s spirit and the intension and attitude of the author.
2. Discussion (group of 4 ) (5 mins)
1. Why do you think Jane is called “a student of African wildlife”?
2. What did Jane have to give up when she went to live in the forest?
3. Do you think it is important to study chimps in the wild rather than in a zoo? Why?
4. Do you think you will go if you are asked to study animals in the wild? Why or why not?
3. Debate: (8 mins)
Girls: Women are able to do more than men.
Boys: Women are not able to do more than men.
Conclusion: Men and women are equal because they have different specialties in different fields
Step 6 Assignments:
1. Make a brief introduction to Ms. Jane Goodall orally.
2. Writing an essay: The Female I like best (120 words)
The second assignment enables students to search various information resources, which can widen their view and continue to inspire their enthusiasm of learning.
6. Summary
In this lesson, I use cooperative leaning method and task-based teaching method to enable students to solve language problems, understand the meaning of the context and dig the deep meaning step by step. Meanwhile, through the discussion and debate, I, acting as a guide, lead the students to get their own correct value of gender and society. In a word, I believe the students can get much more than what is printed in the book after this lesson.