I would like to inform you about an online resource from the British Council at http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/. This web-page is filled with different materials to use to practice pupils’ language-proficiency in reading, listening, speaking and writing, as well as grammar and vocabulary.
To give you an example about how to use this in a lesson I will tell you about a lesson-plan of mine. Under the menu "skills" and then "reading practice" you can find a restaurant menu and exercises associated to it (http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/skills/reading-skills-practice/restaurant-menu). I used this as one part in a recent lesson plan in seventh grade, ongoing for several weeks.
To start with, I divided my pupils in groups of three. After that I handed out native English speaking counties for them to find information about. One county to each group. We gathered most of this information from Språklänksportalen´s site about English speaking countries. You can find it at (http://www.spraklankportalen.se/SITE/HOME---Spraaklaenkportalen/Tematiskt-arbete/Temaomraaden/Engelsktalande-laender.aspx). If you haven´t come in contact with Språklänksportalen before I can tell you that this also is a very useful website.
They should find information about size, citizens, short history, government, currency, important landmarks and points of interest and etcetera. Next, they made a power-point to present their county to the rest of the class.
After that they had presented their country, I presented and talked about the restaurant menu which is presented above. I think the questions on the website, belonging to the menu, suits to be done either individually or together as a group. I let my pupils do them in the groups they already were divided in.
Following assignment became to write their own menu, similar to the example, according to native food which may be found in their countries. We searched on google to find menus from native restaurants to see what specialties they might serve. Later they designed their own menus in Microsoft word.
In the textbook that we use there is a dialogue about two people who want to order at a restaurant. We read this and after, also in groups, they wrote their own dialogues based on their menus. To end this set of lessons the groups read their dialogues as plays in front of the rest of the class.
This is one example on how to use this very useful website.
Good lunch to you all, :-).
Jonas Schenström
Hi Jonas!
ReplyDeleteI think that this seems like a wonderful idea. It is easy to assess the pupils collaboration within groups, creativity for the menus and dialogues, language skills, and of course knowledge of another country. This is a very good idea for collecting a grading basis. The downside is that it is VERY time consuming, but merging different major subjects (Geography, History, Language, etc.), saves time and energy when it comes to detail planning for every subject. Maybe it is something that can be started in the beginning the school year.
For what grade do you recommend this website to?
Hi!
ReplyDeleteThank you for a good example of lessons. It was nice to read about how you incorporated different subject as well as both receptive and productive language skills. Reading this lesson-plan gave me also new ideas of ways to work with language. It was good that you informed about two different websites. I was not familiar with any of them before and they seemed really useful.
I liked that the activities at the British council website was so clearly divided into different levels.
What did your students think of those exercises?