Title: Annie's Big Surprise Party, a RadioPlay
Year/s: 4th ESO
Proposed by: Mª Victoria de Lera
This funny and motivating
consolidation activity, following the syllabus, has been
designed for my 4th year students to practice their speaking as well
as reading and listening skills using drama, in this case a RADIOPLAY in which a
radio advertisement has been included.
As earlier stated, I did this
activity as a project within the second term. As their level of proficiency in English
was quite low, I considered doing this activity as a means of improving their
self-steem when speaking in the target language. They had done some rehearsals
in class as to how to pronounce their lines and, consequently, they didn’t feel
ashamed of repeating the lines. Besides, as only their voices were recorded,
they felt quite confident in doing this activity.
We used just one lesson to
prepare it and rehearse it. The recording was done by the students themselves
during a break.
It is also fair to say that my 4th
year group is quite small; Therefore, I
have chosen the radio script based on
the number of characters and the level of the script itself. I should also add
that some lines had been cut out.
The website where this radio play can be found is https://www.genericradio.com/library.php where there is a variety of vintage radio series scripts.
This is the website address where you can download
the script for our radioplay:
In terms of cross-curricular
links that can be included, it is suffice to say that the history of radio
plays and their undoubted influence on social culture of the 20th
century should be taken into account and be revised in class beforehand. It is
also advisable to have a look at the varieties of American English you come
across while rehearsing the script.
When designing this activity I have also taken into consideration Raquel,
who has stage fright. Since only her voice was recorded, she could feel
self-confident and comfortable with her
performance.
The radio play is an excellent way
to get students speaking and get over their inhibitions about using English in
this way. The play provides a ‘safe’ platform where they don’t have to think of
what to say and the recording provides a sense of distance and anonymity for
shyer students.
Title: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith
Proposed by: Celia Ruiz
This is the trailer from the series made by the BBC:
Year/s: 4th ESO
Lesson Plan “The
Glorious Whitewasher”
Reading/Speaking
Activities based on Chapter 2 from the novel
“The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” written by the American writer Mark Twain
Aimed at 4th
year British Programme.
- 3 or 4 Sessions,
depending on the performance
As regards cross-curricular
aspects, the text has many possibilities regarding the history or geography of
the United States.
A) Tell students they are going to read and hear Chapter
2 from “ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Marc Twain
Here is a brief
summary they can be told before reading:
Saturday is a beautiful
day, but Tom is stuck painting Aunt Polly's fence. He's even jealous of Jim's chore of going to fetch water, which
would at least give him the chance to talk to others at the well. Tom tries to
convince Jim to trade tasks, but Jim says Aunt Polly has already told him not
to let Tom leave the fence. Jim resists Tom's offer of a white marble in
exchange for painting some of the fence, but gives in when Tom promises to show
him his sore toe. Aunt Polly immediately arrives and forces Jim away with a
smack from her shoe.
Tom continues
whitewashing the fence when along comes Ben Rogers, eating an apple and playing at
running an imaginary steamboat. Tom pretends to be wholly absorbed in his task.
When Ben teases him about having to work, Tom contends that whitewashing is a
privilege, and one that Aunt Polly would only trust to him. Ben begs Tom to let
him try, which Tom does, but only after Ben agrees to hand over the rest of his
apple to Tom.
Tom plays this trick on
other boys for the rest of the day. He amasses all sorts of treasure—a dead rat
on a string, marbles, a chalk fragment, and more—and gets the boys to do so
much work for him that the fence has three coats by quitting time. He feels
delighted, rich, and optimistic about the world.
Audio Chapter 2 “ The
Glorious Whitewasher” from “ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain:
B) Students can watch a short video of that scene in the
film. 2´
Through watching the
video, the literary piece is brought nearer to them, it helps them set the book
in time.
C) Students answer a set of comprehension questions on
the text: 10´
Questions and Answers
- 1. This chapter is
mostly about how Tom
- A. Annoys Sid
- B. Gets out of work
- C. Makes New Friends
- D. Learns to Paint
- 2. When did Tom have
to whitewash the fence?
- A. After school
- B. On Saturday
- C. On Sunday morning
- D. After dinner
- 3. Tom got Ben to help
him whitewash by
- A. Pretending it was
fun
- B. Paying him
- C. Doing a bad job
- D. Beating him
- 4. Tom's great law of
human action is that people want something if it is
- A. Free
- B. Valuable
- C. Hard to get
- D. New and shiny
- 5. Tom was rolling in
wealth at the end of the day because
- A. Many boys paid him
- B. Aunt Polly paid him
- C. He found some money
- D. He sold the paint
- 6. Aunt Polly didn't
want Jim to help Tom because
- A. She paid Tom to
whitewash
- B. Jim would do a bad
job
- C. Tom liked to work
alone
- D. She was punishing
Tom
- 7. Tom didn't want the
boys to see him whitewash because they would
- A. Make fun of him
- B. Want to help
- C. Tell their teacher
- D. Throw mud at the
fence
- 8. When Tom wanted a
person to believe something, he could be very
- A. Truthful
- B. Convincing
- C. Insistent
- D. Polite
- 9. This chapter
suggests that when faced with an unpleasant job, you should
- A. Make the best of
it
- B. Try to get out of
it
- C. Do your fair share
- D. Grin and bear it
- 10. The author would
probably agree that people
- A. Can see through
most tricks
- B. Like to help
others
- C. Like to work hard
- D. Can be fooled
easily
- 11. Irony can mean
"a situation that is opposite of what you would expect."
Give TWO
examples of irony in this chapter.
D)
Students go through the text again and try to guess the meaning of words
spoken in colloquial English. They work in groups of three. 15´
E) Vocabulary activity based on a questionnaire, they have to guess the meaning of the words written in bold in a
set of questions. Again they work in groups of three. 15´
F)
Students are separated into groups of 6 and they are given an adapted role
in a play to perform. They might have two sessions dedicated to the role in the
play, one to prepare it and the other to perform it.
The variety of activities that will help students engage with and understand
the text. The class can be split into groups of 6 and each of them could try out different formats for each
performance.
Title: “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”, by John Boyne.
Year/s: 4th ESO
Proposed by: Gloria Díaz
Contextualization
I did the activities this year after the students had read “Ann Frank´s Diary”, a compulsory reader in Spanish. (They had already revised the historical and social context with the Spanish teacher).
Vocabulary activities
I did the activities this year after the students had read “Ann Frank´s Diary”, a compulsory reader in Spanish. (They had already revised the historical and social context with the Spanish teacher).
Vocabulary activities
Working with words.
Look at the words in bold and try to
guess their meaning. Use the grid to help you.
“Not the type of children I want to play with (…)They look filthy. Hilda and Isobel and Louise
have a bath every morning and so do I. Those children look as if they’ve never
had a bath in their lives” (p.37)
“
Father was at the centre of them and looked very smart in his freshly pressed
uniform. His thick dark hair had obviously been recently lacquered and combed,
and as Bruno watched from above he felt both scared and in awe of him” (p.42)
“…Bruno
knocked again and did it louder this time, and as he did so he heard the booming voice from inside call out,
“Enter!” (p.45)
When students look at the word whose meaning they have
to predict in context, they have to think of whether the word has a positive, negative or
neutral meaning, that is, if there is no emotional connotation attached to the
word, f.example the three bolded words in the example “filthy”, “awe” and “booming”
have all negative connotations, whereas the word “knock” or “voice” (in the third quotation) have a neutral meaning.
As for Word Formation, they must look for the stem of
the word and any suffixes or prefixes which could give them extra help (f.
example if a word finishes in -ful, it is
very likely to be an adjective; “booming” is an adjective which comes from a
verb, they know it when they look at the suffix -ing and the stem “boom” is
used in Spanish as an onomatopoeia to describe a loud, strong noise; in
“filthy”, -y is a common suffix for adjectives in English).
Word
|
Part of speech
|
Word
formation:
stem
suffix prefix |
Meaning
|
|
filthy
|
||||
awe
|
||||
booming
|
Vocabulary and drama
1.
Read the dialogue in chapter 5
between Bruno and his father. (It can be found in an attached document)
What can we say about Bruno’s personality? And about his father’s? (Use
adjectives of personality)
2.
Act out the dialogue.
The students were given some time to read the dialogue on their own and later divide
class in threes and give them the roles of Father, Bruno and Observer. With
books closed the students performing Bruno and Father had to role-play the
dialogue using their own words. The Observer has to later assess them and tell
them whether there is anything relevant they have forgotten.
Writing style and techniques
Read the last extract of chapter 10.
Why do you think the author decided to finish with these questions? Where is
the answer to them?
“...Can I ask you something?” Bruno added for a moment.
“Yes”,
said Shmuel
(...)
“Why
are there so many people on that side of the fence?”, he asked .“And
what are you all doing there?”
(Answer: this is a technique used
by the author to keep the reader’s interest, as a hook. The answers to these questions are not
found in the following chapter, but in chapter 12)
Students will not have read the book at this stage, but I asked
them to search in the next two chapters to find where the answers were.
The aim is to make students aware of the fact that there is planning behind the
writing of a book depending on the effects that writers want to achieve.
Writing is not something completely spontaneous.
Cross-curricular activity
Read the last sentences on page 111,
what is the idea expressed there? Can you put it into the historical context of
the time?
“Poland”,
said Bruno thoughtfully, weighing up the word on his tongue. “That’s not as
good as Germany, is it?”
Smuel
frowned. “Why isn’t it?” he asked
“Well,
because Germany is the greatest of all countries”, Bruno replied, remembering
something that he had overhead Father (...) “We’re superior”
I did use clips of the films at
particularly relevant moments, for example I selected a
scene when a soldier is being told to sue his father for having left the
Fatherland in times of war. Of course, there is plenty of material in the film
that shows how the Jews were treated by the soldiers or what their living
conditions in the concentration camp were.
(Totalitarianism is a theme which is
also covered in History in year 4).
Consider how to carry out the drama activity in class: How would students act it out? In front of the class? Using 2.0 tools? Would all students act it out?
Proposed by: Ana Belén Ríos
The origin
of this novel began when in April 1815, the eruption of the Indonesian volcano,
Tambora exploded in a cataclysm of fire, smoke and ash, so the year of 1816 was
known as “the year without a summer”.
As a result
of this, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and a group of English tourists spent the
cold-crop killing days by the fire exchanging ghost stories in the villa
Diodati. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein bears the imprint of the Tambora
summer of 1816.
The
activities related to this novel could be:
·
Firstly:
To read the history of the volcano Tambora, inspiration for this novel.
·
Secondly:
To make a cloze text and comprehension questions
·
Finally,
as a chemistry teacher, to make a model of the volcano Tambora in the laboratory
in which we will make the eruption due to a chemical reaction. The students can
take photographs of it and make a power point presentation using new technologies,
explaining what kind of chemical reaction happens in order to make the
reconstruction of this part of the history as real as possible.
Title: If, by Ruyard Kipling
Year/s: 4th ESO / 1st year Bachillerato
Proposed by: Jose Antonio Sastre Orient
The activity focuses on both language itself and
the cultural aspects of language learning.
The plan provides great detail on how to proceed through the activities
and the objectives for each are very clear.Choosing a piece that focuses on India under the British Empire will allow students to develop a cultural appreciation related to English that they may not previously have been aware of and will help them to relate the global status of English nowadays in part to the colonial influence of Britain at the height of imperialism.
Title: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Year/s: 4th ESO
Proposed by: Sofía Suárez
- Lesson
Plan
Post-Reading
Lesson: Pride and Prejudice
Setting:
the classroom
Resources:
worksheets, writing material, IWB (or a laptop and a projector), Internet
connection.
Timing:
1 session (50 minutes)
Year:
4th ESO (bilingual group)
Previously
in class, the students will have read an adapted version of the book, together
with some original excerpts from the original text and the screening of a
series of scenes from the 2005 film, so that they are familiar with the
language, diction, clothing and general lifestyle of that particular historical
period.
Lesson
delivery: The lesson will start with the teacher writing the opening sentence
of the novel: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” on the
board, asking questions about what the students think it means, as well as
eliciting related information to refresh their memories of the novel. Then, the
teacher will hand out a worksheet with a wordsearch including words that are
relevant to the story (attached file). The students will have some time to find
the words, and the teacher will make sure they know the meaning of all of them.
After,
the teacher will create small groups to work together, telling them that they
have to go over all those words in the wordsearch, and decide why they are
relevant in the novel. After they are ready, the teacher will explain that they
are about to enter a competition to see who knows more about Pride and Prejudice. They will have to spin a customized fortune
wheel (www.wheeldecide.com
) with all those words and explain the concept they get to the rest of the
class. If they don’t know it, they will lose the point. If you want to make it
a little bit more difficult, you can include an extra factor: if, after the
player has explained the word, some other team can add more relevant
information, they will be the winners of the point. Also, you can change the
words in the wordsearch and the wheel depending on the group, since both can be
done using online tools.
Possible
follow-up: the students can choose 3 of the words for a rival team, and so that
they have to create a short clip with the app Toontastic including such words.
Cross-curricular
links: education in values (how our society has changed when it comes to
current perceptions of marriage and relationships), history (this historical
period-late 18th, early 19th centuries, or the Georgian
Era- is part of the curriculum for 4th of ESO).
Bibliography.
I recommend the following versions of the original
novel by Jane Austen:
-
Pride and Prejudice. Black Cat/Vicens Vives (B2.2)
-
Pride and Prejudice, the graphic novel. Campfire
Graphic Novels.
- What other
activities you could do in order to develop their understanding of the themes
raised by the novel or in terms of the characters?
- You can also use character maps, symbolism and major themes using Pixton during the course.
- In terms of assessment, what activities could be used to develop other skills and student’s
understanding of the novel and its context?
Title: “Romeo and Juliet”, by William Shakespeare
Year/s: 4th ESO
Proposed by: Gloria Maté
ACTIVITY: Drama Performance. Romeo and Juliet excerpt
Text source: Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. Modern translated
segments from Romeo and Juliet play.
TEXT
NARRATOR
After the party, Romeo returns to find Juliet. Their
love gives both lovers a sense of freedom. Romeo feels like
(Narrator
takes Romeo´s hand and says:)
“He is flying with love’s light wings”
(2.2).
(Narrator
take´s Juliet´s hand and says:)
Juliet feels that her
love is “as boundless as the sea” (2.2).
She believes
that love can liberate them both from their families.
(Looking at
them) The two teenaged lovers, Romeo and Juliet, fall in
love the first time they see each other, but their families’ conflict requires
they remain enemies. Over the course of the play the lovers’ powerful desires
directly clash with their families’
ACT II, Scene
II
ROMEO
It’s easy for someone to joke about scars if they’ve
never been cut.
-JULIET appears in a window above-
But wait,
what’s that light in the window over there?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Rise
up, beautiful sun, and kill the jealous moon.
The moon is already sick and pale with grief because
you, Juliet, her maid, are more beautiful than she.
Don’t be her maid, because she is jealous. Virginity
makes her look sick and green. Only fools hold on to their virginity. Let it
go. Oh, there’s my lady! Oh, it is my
love. Oh, I wish she knew how much I love her. She’s talking, but she’s not
saying anything. So what? Her eyes are saying something. I will answer them. I
am too bold. She’s not talking to me. Two of the brightest stars in the
whole sky had to go away on business, and they’re asking her eyes to twinkle in
their places until they return. What if
her eyes were in the sky and the stars were in her head?—The brightness of
her cheeks would outshine the stars the way the sun outshines a lamp. If her
eyes were in the night sky, they would shine so brightly through space that
birds would start singing, thinking her light was the light of day. Look how she leans her hand on her cheek.
Oh, I wish I was the glove on that hand so that I could touch that cheek.
(………………………………..)
JULIET
(not knowing ROMEO hears her)
Oh, Romeo,
Romeo, why do you have to be Romeo? Forget about your father and change your
name. Or else, if you won’t change your name, just swear you love me and I’ll
stop being a Capulet
ROMEO
(to himself) Should I listen for more, or
should I speak now?
JULIET
(still not knowing ROMEO hears her) It’s only your name that’s my enemy. You’d
still be yourself even if you stopped being a Montague. What’s a Montague
anyway? It isn’t a hand, a foot, an arm, a face, or any other part of a man.
Oh, be some other name! What does a name mean? The thing we call a rose
would smell just as sweet if we called it by any other name. Romeo would be
just as perfect even if he wasn’t called Romeo. Romeo, lose your name. Trade in
your name—which really has nothing to do with you—and take all of me in
exchange.
ROMEO
(to JULIET) I trust your words.
Just call me your love, and I will take a new name. From now on I will never be
Romeo again.
ACTIVITIES
1.- Reading in class (1 session.
55´) and
oral practise (TEXT provided)
Comprehension questions (in groups of 4)
1.
What are the obstacles for
Romeo and Juliet´s relationship?
2. How does Romeo express his love for Juliet?
3. What´s Juliet´s suggestion in order
to fulfill their love?
4. What´s the last decision the lovers make?
The different groups should
discuss their answers and debate them
2.- Watch a video related to
the scene to be performed (1 session 55´)
1.-Discussion in groups about the video? and adding some more information
to the previous activity (Activity 1: reading)
3.- Costumes. (1 session
55´)
Activity:
1.-Look for information about Elizabethan costumes
Discussion in groups about the costumes that could be suitable for the
performance and look for differences between fashion in the
Renaissance period and onward.
PERFORMANCE
SETTING
The performance will take place in a relevant space/room that could help
the students to experience and live it in a completely different way; that it
is not in the usual classroom. i.e : window in the cafeteria/canteen.
ROLES (The class should be divided in
groups of three):
1.- Narrator
2.-Romeo
3. Juliet
PROCEDURE
(3 periods of 55´)
1st
session: Students choose the roles and start rehearsing the excerpt
and they are asked to try to learn it by heart at home
2nd
session : performances (groups of three).
Students choose 2 or 3 groups of students to perform
on the special day: i.e. 14th February
3rd
session : performance
The 2 or 3 groups of students chosen perform the
excerpt
Students from
the same class and others are asked to be
the audience.
ASSESSMENT
The audience and the teacher will fill in the
following rubrics -previously given out-: and assessed according to the next
marks:
4
EXCELLENT
3
PROFICIENT
2
SATISFACTORY
1
BEGINNER
ROLES
|
LANGUAGE
PERFORMANCE/ FLUENCY
(ACCURACY TO THE
EXCERPT)
|
NON VERBAL COMMUNICAT
|
VOCAL AND VERBAL PERFORMANCE
|
EFFECT ON AUDIENCE
|
COSTUME
MAKE UP
|
TOTAL SCORE
|
NARRATOR
|
||||||
ROMEO
|
||||||
JULIET
|
DIFFERENTIATION
Students can choose a shorter version by just performing the expressions in bold.
STICKING up POSTERS, QUOTES, FLYERS
Students can distribute flyers, posters and quotes related to the play
and the performance that will take place in different rooms .
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