Assignment 3 ICELT: Evaluating and supplementing m

(2009-03-16 12:41:53)
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Assignment 3 ICELT: Evaluating and supplementing materials

Length: 1,000 – 1,500 words

General Outline:

You must briefly analyse some course material for a lesson. You must then select
some supplementary material that can be used in addition to the course material.
You should then use this supplementary material in a lesson and evaluate its
effectiveness.

Specific Guidelines:

1. a) Chose a unit or selection of units from your course book. Describe

how you would supplement these materials for use with a specific class.
Comment on what is missing, not appropriate or how you would provide
 variety. State what supplementary material you would use such as visuals,
authentic texts or materials adapted from other sources.

b) Identify supplementary material and provide rationale for selection and use.

2. Describe a lesson using your supplementary material. Include a copy

of all material, original and adapted. Fully reference copyright sources.

3. Teach the lesson then evaluate the effectiveness of the material

used. Comment on any differences between your planning and what
happened in the lesson. Outline what action you would take if you used the
material again and why.

Remember:

- Section 2 should include a group profile. The profile should include

information about the types of activities and materials that work well with this
group (to support rationale). The profile should also include information about any
special needs students.

- Do not attach a full lesson plan. Rather, describe the lesson in prose.

- Decisions made about the supplementary materials used should be linked

to the learners’ coursebook.

- The lesson used for this assignment should NOT be one of the lessons
assessed for Component Two. However, candidates will need to show in their
writing that it was taught.
1. a) Describe how you would supplement the coursebook.

The lesson was about reading. I chose the material “Reading: Quyuan and the Dragon Boat
Festival” from Oxford English Shanghai Edition 6B Unit 3 Dragon Boat Festival (P14).
According to the course book, the material has been divided into 3 parts. The first part is
“Look and learn”, it shows two pictures with two noun phrases which are related to the
reading material. The second part is “Read” which provides a 3-paragraph-reading passage
for students to read. The third part is “Answer” which provides 4 questions to check
students’ understanding of the reading passage.

I have 34 students in my class. Their average age is 13 years old. I’ve been teaching them
for about 6 months. 2/3 of the students are above average level of the class. They show great
interest in language learning and most of them interact with me well in class. `

By teaching the lesson, I would like to help students find out specific information about
Quyuan and the story of the festival. Also, I would like to check students’ understanding of
using the simple past tense to talk about past events. For these two aims, the course book
arrangement is not enough for learning. The framework of the course book is only a piece of
reading material, and it doesn’t provide any tasks and activities for students to gain the
practice of language. I would like to adapt some material from Oxford English (Shanghai
edition) Multimedia Materials 6B Unit3, Episode 1 and Wokbook 6B P19 to supplement the
course book. These materials would be some pictures which indicate different festivals, an
information list about Quyuan to ask students to find specific information from the passage
to fill in (Ex.1 of students’ work sheet), some gap-filling exercises to help students find out
some past events (Ex.2 of students’ work sheet), and a script writing exercise for students to
have a role play (Ex.3 of students’ work sheet).

1. b) Identify supplementary material and provide rationale.

For the first stage, I would like to choose some pictures showing different festivals like Mid-
autumn festival, Spring Festival, Christmas, Qingming Festival, Lantern Festival and
Dragon Boat Festival as a leading-in part and give prediction to the students. The students
would focus their attention on the festivals thinking that the lesson would be something
about a festival and they would expect to learn the new lesson. The pictures are visual for
students to have a deep impression that could help arouse students’ interest.

For the extensive task, I would like to ask students to scan the text for particular bits of
information about Quyuan from the passage to fill in the blanks (Ex.1 of students’ work
sheet). As stated by Jeremy Harmer (2000, P.34) “They need to be able to scan the text for
particular bits of information they are searching for.” Doing Ex.1 would help students get
the first impression of the text and improve their reading skills of searching for particular
information.

The passage is a story using the simple past tense to talk about past events. The students
have already known this kind of tense, but sometimes they still make mistakes. I would like
to check students’ understanding of using the simple past tense to talk about past events and
some past forms of the verbs used in the passage (Ex.2 of students’ work sheet). I would like
to clarify these verbs in the context sentences. It would be natural for the students to practice
the past tense and past forms of the verbs. And also it would be a kind of consolidation of
understanding the meaning of the passage.

For the freer practice (Ex.3 of students’ work sheet), I would like to encourage students
work in groups to write a script of the story and have a role play in class. While reading the
passage, the students gain some receptive skills. The students can use the information
they’ve read and found from the passage to write out the script. The students would gain
some productive-skill training by writing and speaking (role-play).

2. Describe a lesson using the supplementary material.

Lesson aim: By the end of the lesson, the students would be able to find out some specific
information about Quyuan and the story of the festival. They would also be able to use the
simple past tense to talk about past events.

Stages: 1. Leading-in. I showed 6 pictures indicating different festivals. I asked the students
match the festivals with the pictures given. I asked the students to predict what kind of
material they would read (Festivals). The pictures were adapted from Oxford English
(Shanghai edition) Multimedia Materials 6B Unit3, Episode 1. Matching the pictures with
the festivals would prepare the students for reading and give expectations to them. 2. Pre-
teach vocabulary. In this stage, I helped the students get to know the meaning of “celebrate,
remember, lunar” with the help of some pictures. The new words would help the students
find some useful information. 3. Extensive task. First, I asked the students to skim the
passage to find out what story was about. Second, I asked the students to scan the passage
and find some particular information about Quyuan. The students would finish doing Ex 1
which was adapted from Oxford English (Shanghai edition) Multimedia Materials 6B Unit3,
Episode 1 and Wokbook 6B P19. 4. Intensive task. The students were asked to read the
passage again to get some detailed comprehension. I would ask them to find out the answers
to the questions listed on P14 of their course book. 5. Checking understanding of language.
The students are quite familiar with using past tense to talk about past events. In this lesson,
I need to check the understanding with CCQs. The students would finish doing Ex 2 which
was adapted from Oxford English (Shanghai edition) Multimedia Materials 6B Unit3,
Episode 1. 6. Freer practice. I would ask the students to work in groups and write out the
script of the story according to the passage and have a role play in class. The students would
do the task with the help of Ex 3 which was adapted from Oxford English (Shanghai edition)
Multimedia Materials 6B Unit3, Episode 1.

3. Evaluate the material.

I thought my lesson aims were achieved with help of those supplementary materials. The
supplementary materials used in the lesson are effective. According to Brian Tomlinson
(1998, P9), material should help learners to develop confidence and we can attempt to build
confidence through activities which try to ‘push’ learners slightly by engaging them in tasks.
The supplementary materials I chose for the lesson provided effective and viable tasks for
my students to be able to understand the passage and find out specific information from the
passage. Ex.1 was an information gathering of Quyuan, which help students get particular
information from the whole passage. The students could get a thorough learning of the
character Quyuan and this would be a good preparation for the last stage. Ex.2 helped the
students review the past forms of verbs from the context. This would be an easy task for
students to use language. Doing Ex 3 is a bit different from my planning. The students only
had time to finish a very simple script and only one group showed their performance. I
thought I would give some key words or some hints in guiding them to write the script to
make the task clearer and easier. Such as telling students to use short sentences, the scripts
should be easy to read and act out. Then it would save time and provide more chances for
students to practice using language.
Reference:

Jeremy Harmer (2000), How to teach English, Foreign Language Teaching and
Research Press

Brian Tomlinson (1998), Materials Development in Language Teaching, CUP