Women of Achievement
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My topic is Women of Achievement, that is, unit 1, in module 4. The reading passage “A Student of African Wildlife” is talked later and my talk consists of 4 parts. Part 1, my understanding of the material. Part 2, teaching approaches. Part 3, preparations before class. Part 4, teaching procedure.
Part 1 my understanding of the material
First, let me introduce the reading passage. It is the center of this unit’s teaching and learning. It is made up of 4 paragraphs, that is, one day’s observing chimps with Jane in the forest; how Jane did her research and her achievements; Jane’s love towards animals and her contributions to animal protection; and a short summary to her. By learning this lesson, the students can not only understand women’s status in society and everyday life, their values and contributions, their difficulties and achievements, but also learn how to use some words, phrases and sentence patterns. Of course, the students can practise their reading skills, such as skimming, scanning and careful reading.
Second, I want to tell something about the students. Although the students have the basic abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing, they still need many opportunities to explore and convey meanings; to classify and reflect on their thoughts, feelings and experiences; to experiment and use their imaginations, and also to develop their autonomous learning ability, cooperative learning ability and investigative learning ability.
Third, about teaching aims
Knowledge aims: To learn how to use the mastery words, phrases and sentence patterns;
To learn sth about Jane’s research.
Ability aims: To cultivate the students’ autonomous learning ability, cooperative learning ability and investigative learning ability;
To develop students’ reading skills, such as making prediction and drawing inferences from the context.
Emotional aims: To encourage the students to participate in the class activities and cultivate their teamwork spirit;
To learn Jane’s bravery and perseverance in achieving her goals;
To reinforce the sense of wildlife protection.
Fourth, about key points and difficult points
I think they are to develop the students’ reading skills, such as making prediction and drawing inferences from the context; and to learn how to use the mastery words, phrases and sentence patterns.
Part 2 Teaching approaches
According to the analysis above, I’ll try to use the following theories: to make students the real master of the class while the teacher myself the director; to inspire the students, especially girl students to chase their dreams with great determinations.
Therefore, task—based teaching method, students—centered teaching method and CAI will be used.
Part 3 Preparations before class
I will ask the students to surf the Internet or go to the library to find some information about great women that they are interested in.
And in class, they will give reports of the information they have obtained. By doing this activity, I can train their autonomous learning ability and investigative learning ability, and their abilities of collecting and dealing with information.
Part 4 Teaching procedure
I designed 6 steps to deal with this reading passage.
Step 1 lead—in
Activity: picture appreciation and question answering
I’ll show them some beautiful pictures of wild animals, such as lions, Tibetan antelopes, monkeys and chimps. Then one question will be asked: which animal has the closest connection with human beings? It’s not so difficult. Of course, chimps. Then the students can find more about chimps from the reading passage.
The purpose of this activity is to stimulate the students’ interest and naturally lead to the reading passage.
Step 2 pre—reading
Activity: look and guess
The students will be asked to just glance at the title and the two pictures in the book, and then guess what they will read in the text. And they’ll be divided into groups of four to have a discussion.
This activity is to inspire the students to read actively, not passively. Surveys show that active reading can raise the readers’ interest and reading efficiency. Other purposes are to develop the students’ reading skill—making prediction and to encourage the students to think in English, express their thoughts in English and cooperate with each other.
Step 3 reading
Activity 1 scanning
The students are required to scan the text quickly and find out specific information of the following questions.
1 who is the student?
2 what animals are observed?
3 when did Jane Goodall arrive at Gombe? How old was she?
4 what was the purpose of her study?
By doing this activity, the students can improve their reading skill—scanning. And they can get the two lines of the whole passage, the main line—student, and the hidden line—wildlife. It builds a solid base for the latter reading comprehension.
Activity 2 skimming
The students are asked to skim the text quickly and summarize the main idea of each paragraph.
By doing this, I can train the students’ reading skill—skimming. And before their skimming, I’ll remind them to find out the topic sentence of each paragraph.
Activity 3 careful reading
For paragraph 1: Video watching and completing a diagram
Get the students to watch a short video of Jane’s research with chimps.
This paragraph is a description of what Jane and her partners did in the forest. The video can turn the description in words into images. So it seems as if the students themselves went into the forest. Then a diagram will be shown to the students. It contains the main actions of the chimps. They have to complete it. By these two changes, the students can master the important words, phrases and sentences better.
For paragraphs 2-3: Retelling job
These two paragraphs are relatively long, so the students may have difficulties in classifying the content. Therefore I divided all the sentences into 3 aspects, that is, Jane’s difficulties, her discoveries and her contributions. According to the key words, they have to retell it.
By doing this activity, I can train the students’ language organizing ability to meet the demands of the new curriculum.
For paragraph 4: Question answering
It is a short summary to Jane and implies that women can do what they want to do as men. This paragraph is relatively short and easy to understand. So the questions are fairly easy and will be offered to the less talented students.
Step 4 post—reading
I designed 2 activities.
Activity 1: multiple choice questions
These questions are to help the students get a better understanding of the text. Some of them are about details, and some of them are inferences. Inference questions are more difficult. So I will give them to the top students, and the easier ones to less talented students. Therefore all the students can have the chance to participate in the class activities and achieve the pleasure of learning English. Thus task-based teaching method is used here.
Activity 2: qualities and looking for relevant sentences
It is an activity to consolidate what they have learnt in the class. Traditionally, a blank-filling task is often used in this step, but it is a passive activity. In order to get the students to learn actively, I designed this activity. Just get the students to look at the title and think about “what kind of student Jane is”. They will say many words, like hard-working, brave and so on. Then ask them to find out the sentences from which we can see these qualities. To do this job, the students have to read the whole passage more carefully again, and they will get a deeper impression of the language structure. Here students-centered teaching method is used.
Step 5 Discussion
The students will be divided into several groups to discuss the following questions.
1 Jane was brave enough to live in the forest. What difficulties do you think she was facing?
2 If you have the chance, will you do what she did?
This activity is to cheer the students to think deeply about Jane’s research and to practice their oral English.
Step 6 Homework
Activity : Thinking and Writing
The topic is “ though our grandmothers and mothers haven’t done something great like Jane, do you think they are great, too?” Give your reasons.
This activity is designed to train their writing skills and stimulate the students to become aware of the greatness of ordinary women. So greatness is close to the students’ daily life.
In class, I will use CAI, so there is no blackboard design.
That’s all. Thank you!