TEFL – Module 10
Lesson Planning: Things to consider
Good or bad skills objective?
…practiced reading a short story for gist
…practiced listening to a radio news bulletin for specific information
…revised vocabulary connected to relationships
…studied a new use of the present perfect: to express an unfinished activity from a moment in the
past up to the present
…practiced free speaking in the context of an informal discussion sharing opinions about footballers’
salaries
…practiced writing a letter of complaint
…studied and practiced different ways of asking for permission
…become more aware of the importance of sentence stress, and will have practiced producing it
accurately.
Are these aims or activities?
Speak about their weekend to another student.
Match text with pictures.
Generate interest in the topic / engagement.
Complete the text by filling in the gaps.
Reading for specific information.
Integrate listening and speaking.
Look at picture prompts and repeat using the present continuous.
Focus on the grammar point.
After the lesson
Did you complete your tasks?
Did your lesson work?
What materials were effective?
What material didn’t work?
Was the context clear for the students?
Was the target language appropriate for the class?
Did you concept check?
What did the students take away at the end of the lesson?
TEFL10_Ref3
STAGES TO TEACHING SKILLS
EXAMPLE: READING SKILL
Pre-reading: Model the following. What are things bad for the environment? Driving … Teacher elicits ideas
onto the board. Groups of 3, discuss which are human-based. Monitor. Feedback, circle on the board.
While-reading (h/p TR3):
Gist: Read this text and answer the question “Is it for or against human activities? Feedback: For. Why are
there line numbers on this text? What else could it use (pics)?
Detail: Pairs. Now, write your name and your partner’s at the top of the text and with this piece of tape,
put it up somewhere on the opposite side of the class from where you are sitting. Hand out cello tape.
Now pick one partner to run and one to write.
“When I call out a question about the text, running partner go to your team’s text – not someone else’s,
but yours – find the answer and tell the writer. Writer, write it down. For example ….
Questions:
How many activities could we eliminate?
What activities do more damage?
How much damage could we repair?
Post-reading: What would be a good follow-up task for this reading? With your partner think of one post-
reading activity. Remember that most post-reading activities often integrate other skills work or focus on
some language in the text. Monitor. Feedback
The last activity … post reading … is a running dictation. It engages the students, makes a standard
activity into a game and breaks the boredom
EXAMPLE OF TEACHING READING SKILL
Time: 90 Minutes
Objectives: Show Ts reading sub-skills, activities and techniques.
Materials: h/o TR1 Reading strategies; TR2 lesson sequencing; TR3 Aerobics text.
Warmer
__ min.
Ask the students/Trainees, “When you’re reading for pleasure what is something you do before opening the
book, opening your tablet, phone or computer?” “ Is your preparation different when you’re reading for
work or to learn specific information? What are a few things you might do before reading? How we prepare
ourselves is how we should prepare the students.
Board some student thoughts in point form.
Discussion:
__ min.
Today we’re going to talk about teaching reading skills. Why do we work on reading skills with
our students? (Elicit: necessary skill, authentic language, teach phonology, grammar, lexis inductively
by ‘noticing’, ideal for functional structures, can motivate, model writing skills, build context or set scene).
Why is it not commonly used with young learners? (Elicit: not yet proficient with own language,
curriculum demands, etc). But with really young learners, a short dialogue with lots of pics can be used to
help build vocabulary (colors, basic phrases, etc.)
Reading Sub-Skills:
__ min.
The most common categories reading skills teachers work on are: Board: (1) understanding the
gist and main points. This is call Extensive Reading; and (2) listening for specific details. This
is called Intensive Reading. You may also come across “Receptive Reading” (for pleasure, like
a novel) or “Intensive Reading” (like studying a textbook).
Reading texts:
___ min.
Teacher-led onto board. What can we use for texts?
Elicit: letters (formal & informal); newspaper / magazine adverts, articles; trade journals (Bus. English);
notes; novels; faxes; emails; poems; songs; transcripts from movies, TV; timetables; telephone directories;
menus; public signs; dictionaries and encyclopedias; readers; course book texts; etc.
Reading Strategies and sub-skills (h/o TR1):
___ min.
Pairs. With your partner, discuss whether you think the following tactics are effective or
ineffective for helping students to read.
Feedback: Effective = Ineffective =
Reading is often broken into two types of sub-skills. Skimming and scanning. We teach our
students to skim texts by quickly looking for the meaning in extensive reading. We teach our
students to scan texts to find answers to specific details in intensive reading.
Stages in a reading lesson are often broken down into pre-reading, while-reading and post
reading stages. Pre-reading often means building context, setting the scene and maybe
having a first read by giving sts a focus question (1 question with answer near end of text).
While reading often means extensive or intensive tasks. Post-reading often involves
integrating other skills or doing language work (on lexis, grammar, phonology).
Task I (Sequencing. h/o TR2) ___ min.
Pairs. With your partner, please put the following stages of a typical reading class into the right
order. For example, “Vocabulary work or set the context? Which one first?” (Handout TL2 and
monitor / or Cut out slips and they order kinesthetically). Feedback. Now, with your partner, label the
stages as pre-, while- or post- stages.
Answers: Pre: E and F / While: A, B, and C / Post: D, G and H.
Reading Mini- Demonstration (h/o TR3)
___ min.
Pre-reading: Model T/T the following. What do you do for exercise? I run. T/S and elicit activities onto
the board. Groups of 3, discuss which are aerobic. Monitor. Feedback, circle on the board.
While-reading (h/p TR3):
Gist: Read this text and answer the question, is it for or against aerobic exercise Feedback:
For. Why are there line numbers on this text? What else could it use (pics)?
Detail: Pairs. Now, write your name and your partner’s at the top of the text and with this piece
of tape, put it up somewhere on the opposite side of the class from where you are
sitting. Hand out cello tape. Now pick one partner to run and one to write. When I call out
question about the text, running partner go to your team’s text – not someone else’s, but
yours – find the answer and tell the writer. Writer, write it down. For example…. Questions: How
many workouts a week are good for you? What aerobic activities build more nerve connections? How many
times a week should you walk?
Post-reading: What would be a good follow up task for this reading? With your partner think of
one post-reading activity. Remember that most post-reading activities often integrate other
skills work or focus on some language in the text. Monitor. Feedback
Reading and Young Learners (Time pending)
___ min.
What about reading with young learners? Can you use that last text? What about eight year
olds – would they find that exciting? What things would they like? Teacher-led list onto the board.
Try to elicit Harry Potter.
A really good teacher can take a text and exploit it for different skills and language work. I can
take a newspaper article on my way to a class and come up with enough skill-based activities
and language work (phonology, grammar, etc.) to last 5-6 hours.
Groups of ¾. Imagine you have a few pages from a Harry Potter novel. What kinds of skills work
could you do with the learners? List one reading, one writing, one speaking and one listening
activity you could do that would involve this text.
Monitor. Give additional feedback ideas such as Hogswarth radio (S); Fill in the text on large paper (R);
Make a spell book, timetable or crossword (W); Read a description of a class – sts run to that area set up
like the class.(L). Hold up pictures when they hear a description of a teacher read out (L); Letters from
Harry about today’s class (W); What happens next role plays (S); etc.
Hand out TR1: Reading Strategies
Are the following reading strategies effective or in effective in helping students to improve their reading
comprehension skills?
1. Mouthing the words.
2. Looking for a topic sentence in paragraphs.
3. Trying to use context to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words.
4. Mentally translating everything.
5. Using a dictionary.
6. Speculating about the content of the text on the basis of headings, pictures and introductory
strategies.
7. Learning to read faster.
8. Reading ahead, outside class.
9. Stopping reading to ask their partner or the teacher the meaning of a word.
10. Showing sts pictures representing scenes from the text.
11. Giving sts a glossary of all the difficult words before reading.
12. Showing sts how to pronounce words as they’re reading.
13. Comparing two grammatical tenses in the reading.
Hand out TR2: Stages of a Reading Lesson
Label the stages of the reading lesson below from 1 to 10.
Order Stages
A: Focus on language in the text.
B: Skimming to discover what the text is specifically about and if the writer was opinionated.
C: Scanning to find out the who, where, and why of the events.
D: Discussion on the events.
E: Watching a quick news video about one of the characters in the text.
F: Predicting what the text is about from a set of pictures.
G: Matching words from the text with their definitions.
H: Sts act out a role play of a journalist interviewing characters from the text.
“ Moves” … Is aerobic exercise really all that good for you?(TR3)
1. It won’t surprise fitness freaks to learn that aerobic exercise does more than raise the heart rate. It
lifts the spirit and builds confidence. But some doctors think that too much aerobic exercise can be
damaging to blood veins vessels. That said, brain researchers believe that exercise is not
2. only good for bones and muscles as well as lungs, but it strengthens parts of the brain.
Research suggests that aerobic exercise helps you learn new things and remember old information better.
Aerobic exercise sends more blood to the brain with substances that develop new nerve connections. If the
10. exercise has complicated movements like dance steps or basketball moves, the brain produces
even more nerve connections – the more connections, the better the brain can process all kinds of
information.
Scientists sill don’t fully understand the relationship between exercise and brain power. For the moment,
people just have to trust that exercise
15. is helping them to learn or remember. Scientific research clearly shows, however, that three or
more workouts a week are good for you. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association,
for example, shows that walking four to five miles (6.5 to 8 km) an hour for 45 minutes five times a
week helps you live longer. So don’t be a couch potato. Get out there and do something about it.