Teacher: Lauren Drew (with Jorge Beltran) Course: I5 Date: 10/17/2013 Goal: To prepare students to write short advantages/disadvantages

essays by having them recognize typical structure, content and transition words in a sample essay (based on the course book p. 62) and brainstorm ideas for their own essays.
STAGE NAME & TIME STAGE AIM PROCEDURE MAIN INTERACTION TEACHING AIDS

Pre-stage for analyzing sample essay 5-7 minutes

Activate student schemata, have students recognize advantages and disadvantages and begin to develop these ideas in an informal way

Ask students if they have ever accepted a job in a foreign country. Teacher- PPT on (Some students should say yes, as they are currently working in the US). ss, pairs IWB Briefly ask student(s) if this was a difficult to decision to make and why. Summarize by telling students that when were making a difficult decision we often weigh advantages (positives) against disadvantages (negatives). Open the PPT slide and tell students that were going to imagine moving to a new country where they dont know anyone and dont speak the language (e.g. Sweden or Morocco). Would the listed items (it would be expensive, you would get to know another culture etc.) be advantages or disadvantages of moving there and why? Ask ss to discuss in pairs. Monitor and assist as necessary. Ask early finishers to add their own ideas to the list. Open class feedback where students drag items on the list to one side of the board for advantages and the other for disadvantages, explaining their choices. Tell students that theyre going to read a short essay analyzing this imaginary choice. Show the students the cut-up sentences and ask them if it looks like an essay (lead them to guess that they will have to correctly order these sentences into an essay). Assign pairs and pass out the sentences. Monitor and assist as necessary, helping students to sequence the items using content information as well as transitions. As pairs finish, quickly check their order and ask them what the authors opinion was. Then hand them the cut-up strips with the functions of each sentence (To introduce the first advantage; To transition

Analyzing the sample essay for structural organization 10 minutes

Students will sequence a short essay and understand its underlying structure

Pairs, open class

Cut-up strips of the essay on p. 62 (one strip per sentence); cut-up strips with explanatio

(=change topic) to disadvantages etc.). Instruct students to match a functional description to each sentence of the essay. Ask early finishers to write their answers on the white board. When all of the groups have finished, check the answers as a class and elicit groupings of these functions into sections of the essay (introduction, advantages, disadvantages and conclusion). Analyzing sample for transitions 10 minutes Students will recognize how transitional devices are used to improve an essay and be able to identify them in a sample essay Tell students that were going to look at the essay in more detail. Open the power point and show two example paragraphs (one with transitions - the one they just read - and one without the same essay minus transitions) and ask students to quickly discuss with their partners which one is better and why. Change the partners and set 30 sec. time limit. Open class feedback. Ask students who thought the second one was better to raise their hands. Choose one student to explain why. Ask students if they know what phrases like last but not least are called (transition words or logical connectors). And elicit why we use them (to better connect/show the relationship between ideas and to make essays clearer). Write these on the IWB. Ask ss to look again at the sample essay. Tell them the essay is also on p. 62 of their student books. Tell them to look for any other transitional words they can find in the essay, then compare with their partners. As they compare with their partners, ask them to also think about the function of each transition. Ask early finishers to think of other examples of transitional devices they know. Open class feedback: ask ss to come up to the board in pairs to name a couple of transition words they found and explain what they thought the function of each was. Ask ss to agree or disagree and only interject when necessary. Briefly focus on how most of these words (however, finally, etc.) are used in the beginning of the sentence with a comma. Pairs, open class, tss, individ.

ns of the functions of each sentence

PPT on IWB, student books (On Target 2 p. 62)

Brainstorming advantages and disadvantages 10 minutes

To allow ss time and support to brainstorm ideas for what will become their essays

Tell the students that were going to be discussing a different topic to practice these ideas. Open PPT slide to questions If a magician offered you the power to be invisible, would you accept it? showing the empty table with advantages and disadvantages. Give ss about 20 seconds to think, then ask them to stand up. Tell ss that they should try to ask EVERYONE in the class if they would accept the power or not and to give one reason why (not). Ask ss to report back to their partners if more people answered yes or no and what reasons they remembered. Tell ss to use these ideas as well as their own to complete the advantages/disadvantages table with at least 3 ideas for each. Monitor and assist as necessary. Open class feedback with the ideas. Tell ss that their homework will be to write a short essay answering this question. They should use the structure we learned and transition words. Remind ss to use p. 62 as a model.

Class cirrculation, pairs

PPT on IWB

Next lesson: Students were provided with peer feedback questionnaires which were completed in pairs in class. This then guided revision of the essays. Notes on the lesson: The lesson seemed to be generally successful, although the grammatical aspect of the transitional devises was only covered briefly as the words were put on the board. More form-focused practice may have been useful at this point. As students seemed to be fairly familiar with a lot of these words, it may have been nice to introduce more and to compare ones used in everyday speech with those used in formal writing.