Teaching EFL Listening via FUN WITH ENGLISH Books/7B/Lesson 7

FUN WITH ENGLISH 7B
Chapter 6: A children's museum
Anqing Foreign Language School
Grade 7
Lesson 7
Version 0.3

Lesson Objectives

• Students will enjoy themselves, giving a positive association with the English language a chance to develop.
• Create an atmosphere that's comfortable enough for students to feel take chances speaking English to me and their peers.
• Ask the right questions to get a lively discussion going about anything.
• Find a way to make English more appealing than speaking to their friends in Chinese.
• Look for ways to move from me speaking to them in English to them speaking to eachother and me in English, that is from one to many to many to many.

Lesson Plan

Before Class Starts

• If time, walk around and chat with the students before the bell rings.

Greeting: Yo! What's up?

Opening Joke

• Fred's Piano joke from The Internet TESL Journal
  • <http://iteslj.org/c/jokes.html>
  • Direct link to joke <http://pages.citebite.com/c2v2k9l3e6bdo>
  • Introduce as a man is sick so he goes to the hospital.
  • Instead of operation say "eat medicine".
• Do you understand?

Opening Discussion: Anything

• What do you want to talk about today?

Textbook: Page 22 Let's get ready A

• Make sure they read out the full answer.
• Question Questions
  2. What is the "Animal in the past"?
  3. What are the "Animals around us"?
  4. What are they looking at in the night sky?

Textbook: Page 22 Let's get ready B

• Make sure they read out the full answer.
• Question Questions
  1. Do you like medicine?
  2. Have you ever gotten a headache from watching too much TV?
  3. What does a picture of a heart mean/symbolize? [Draw a picture of a heart on the board]
  4. Have you ever broken any bones? [Tell my collarbone breaking incident story]
  5. What is a disease?

Choose to talk about doctors or Childrens Museums

Discussion: Doctors

• Do you like doctors? Why?
• Have you ever gone to see a doctor?
• Do you want to be a doctor when you are older?

Discussion: Children's Museums

• What is a museum? [Mandarin = Bowuguan]
• Do you like museums?
• What can you learn at museums?
• Have you ever gone to a museum? Where?
• What is a children's museum?
• What should a children's museum have?
• What can you put in a children's museum?

Activity: Create a Children's Museum

• I want you to work with a partner.
• You are going to make a museum for children in Anqing.
• You need to answer these three questions.
  • What kind of museum will it be? Science? History? Sports?
  • What will be in the museum?
  • How much will it cost for children to go to the museum?

Textbook: Page 23 Let's listen 1 B Tapescript Page 81

Textbook: Page 24 Let's listen 2 A Tapescript Page 81 (Maybe)

Students Choose: MJ or Textbook?

• What would you like to do now, play a game or listen to a Michael Jackson song?

Activity: The Man in The Mirror Slideshow"

• Introduce the song as one of Michael Jackson's hits from his 1988 "Bad" Album. [1]
• Ask first:
  • Do you know this song?
  • What do you think will be its subject?
• Write questions on the board before we begin, so they can have something to look for and check them as they're listening/reading the lyrics.
  • Who is the man in the mirror?
  • What does he want to do?
  • Why?
  • Do you think he is right or wrong?
• Stop it after he sings the chorus through the first time and talk about it. If they don't know the answers, do not give them just keep playing the song and stop later.
• View online <http://show.zoho.com/public/charlie.danoff/The%20Man%20in%20The%20Mirror%20Slideshow>
• Google Music China link to the song (Only for those in China - Beware has several pop up ad's)
  • <http://www.google.cn/music/song?id=Se9dcc8cb5e82cda7&rview=share>
• Lyrics from CRAVEONLINE
  • <http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Michael-Jackson/Man-In-The-Mirror.html>

Extra Time

Game: Number of Letters? (Mr. Brown)

• Make two teams.
• Tell them to make a word that begins with one letter, e.g. D, and has 6 letters.
• Go back and forth between the teams making the words.

Lesson Review

Class Notes

16 Apr 2010 AM Period 3 Grade 7 Class 7

• Had an opening discussion about computers for a little, but it got to a strange point.
  • Told them about my blog will be interesting if any of them

visit.

• Class has a great attitude, but we haven't quite had a sensational lesson yet.

Next Week

• The extra test did not belong to the boy I thought it did. Get that sorted.
• Put all the students into 2 rows, per my colleague who observed me last week's suggestion.

16 Apr 2010 AM Period 4 Grade 7 Class 9

• This class has an incredible amount of energy.
• Today we spent about 20 to 30 minutes where they just asked me questions.

Next Week

• give them my qq number, in case the one i tried to remember this week is wrong.
• did better with the group of boys on my left, but still progress can be made.

16 Apr 2010 PM Period 3 Grade 7 Class 2

• Brought up the trip from last week, which got some chuckles.

Perhaps could have pushed it further, but I didn't.

• When I asked them what they wanted to talk about I got a few responses (NBA Playoffs, ghosts) but

nothing that grabbed everyone.

• We never made a connection like we did the week before.
• Textbook activities went fine.
  • Joke fit in really well with the doctor section. Moved it to the end, and added in my story

about breaking a bone for the question about bones.

• A few of them got the joke, but I didn't take the time to really explain it.
• The speakers in the classroom didn't work, so instead of listening the MJ song, we just sang it.

I was surprised they went with me.

• Overall this group has more than enough talented/eager individuals that anything I do in the

lesson will go well.

Next Week

• Some sort of small groups Problem Based Learning-esque activity.

]

Day in Review

What Could I Have Done Better?

• Had something better for them in the opening.

What Did I Do Well?

• Rested/prepared as I've been this week, and experimented throughout with new approaches.

What Did I Learn?

• With interested classes whatever I throw at them will work one way or another. Question is how

can they get to the next level?

What Did My Students Get From The Lesson?

• Oral/aural practice, a little bit of thinking.

Were the Lesson Objectives Achieved?

• Students will enjoy themselves, giving a positive association with the English language a chance

to develop.

• • yes
• Create an atmosphere that's comfortable enough for students to feel take chances speaking English

to me and their peers.

• • maybe
• Ask the right questions to get a lively discussion going about anything.
  • no
• Find a way to make English more appealing than speaking to their friends in Chinese.
  • overall yeah, but more because they like me, not because of anything special i did today.
• Look for ways to move from me speaking to them in English to them speaking to eachother and me in

English, that is from one to many to many to many.

• • No.

How Can I Improve the Lesson?

• Better opening and easier joke.

Appendix

Acknowledgments

• Ideas I got from Stuart Brown, I acknowledged with (Mr. Brown).
• I would like to thank all the 7th and 8th grade classes at Anqing Foreign Language School who had this lesson for their participation and feedback. I would also like to thank the Anqing Foreign Language School for allowing me to teach there.

Changelog

Version 0.3 15 Apr 2010

• Added changes in similar parts from FWE 8B Lesson 7 Version 0.21.
• Gave a choice between talking about doctors or museums.
• Made the opening discussion up to the students.

Version 0.2 15 Apr 2010

Version 0.11 12 Apr 2010

Version 0.1 10 Apr 2010

References

1. Wikipedia: Man in the Mirror