Case 1 Lesson Plan 1 Jacob Mroczkiewicz Emily Meyer Nick Montan

Verb Tenses and Their Social Contexts Grades 6-7

Overview of Lesson Students will be taught to speak English in a daily social context by collaborating in groups. By focusing on verb tense and greetings, students will work in groups and perform a skit to practice his or conversational skills. Description of Learners: Bogot, Columbia, Education Ministry of Columbia Native Spanish speakers 2-3 years of English class work 25 students/class 6-7th grade Low level of technology in classroom Lesson Content: Development of: Verb tenses Conversational skills Learning Objectives Standards To teach students basic conversational skills that happen in an everyday social context. This lesson plan addresses the following standards from the National Council of Teachers of English: Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g. for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information) Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles. Projector, pencil, paper

Description of Learners and Lesson Content

Required Materials

Case 1 Lesson Plan 2 Procedures 1. Students break off into groups of two or three to have a brief conversation about themselves and activities they did the night before. (3-5 mins) 2. Bring the class back together and ask for five volunteers to share the conversation with his or her partner(s). (5 mins) 3. Advise the students to take out note-taking materials for a brief lecture. 4. Bring up a Powerpoint that the you have prepared before hand which includes various forms of media (videos, graphics, texts, etc.) detailing verb tense and and proper verb tense usage. (10 mins) 5. Explain to students the activity for the day. The students will break up into groups of two or three. Within their groups they will create a short performance over one of the given situations: phone conversation radio commercial getting something at the store sporting event news report (15 mins) 6. While the students are working in their groups, emphasize the lesson objective: students should focus on improving basic conversational skills. As well, walk around to each group making sure they are all using skills they learned in this lesson and previous lessons. 7. When groups are finished, each will present skits in front of the class and will receive feedback from the teacher. (10 mins)

Assessment

Students will be assessed based on level of participation on a 3 point scale. 3 points - Student demonstrates active participation in creating the script for his or her performance. 2 points - Student only participated in part of the activity 1 point - Student was not actively engaged within his or her group.

Case 1 Lesson Plan 3 Reference and Reference Materials Herazo Rivera, J. (2012). Using a genrebased approach to promote oral communication in the colombian english classroom. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 14(2), 109-126. Salaberry, M. (2013). Contrasting Preterite and Imperfect use among advanced L2 learners: Judgments of iterated eventualities in Spanish. IRAL: International Review Of Applied Linguistics In Language Teaching, 51(3), 243-270. doi:10.1515/iral-2013-0011

Alternative Lesson Plan

If there is a problem with the lesson plan directed above such as: Lack of Time Absent Students Etc. Proceed with this alternative lesson plan. 1. Students break off into groups of two or three to have a brief conversation about themselves and activities they did the night before. 2. Bring the class back together and ask for five volunteers to share the conversation with his or her partner(s) 3. Advise the students to take out notetaking materials for a brief lecture 4. Bring up a Powerpoint that the you have prepared before hand which includes various forms of media (videos, graphics, texts, etc.) detailing verb tense and and proper verb tense usage. 5. Prepare the students to engage in a helpful movie about verbs in English 6. Turn on The Great African Safari: Verbs video. 7. If enough time allows have the student do these written exercises on his or her paper: (Fill in the blank) He ____ tennis yesterday She was _____ a while ago We _____him president

Case 1 Lesson Plan 4 He _____ every day The family _____ dinner at six. Allow any word that makes sense in the the context.

b.) Learning a new language is significantly easier when working in a group. The three of us have had experience in Spanish class and came to the conclusion that successful teachers have utilized this strategy. While it is important for the teacher to have direct instructional time, we realize practical application is most effective when collaborating as a group. In 2013, Rafael Salaberry concluded in his study, Contrasting Preterite and Imperfect use among advanced L2 learners: Judgments of iterated eventualities in Spanish, that native Spanish speakers have just as difficult a time with preterite and imperfect verb tense when learning English as English-speakers learning Spanish. For this reason we have decided to focus a large portion of our lesson on making sure the students really understand the context in which preterites and imperfects are used. Obviously, there is a huge difference between verbs and any other part of of speech. For example, nouns largely require memorization to really grasp. Verbs, however, should be used in a social context to truly understand their meanings and how a slight change can completely change the context of a sentence. Jose David Herazo Rivera (2012) wrote in his study, Using a genre-based approach to promote oral communication in the colombian english classroom, that learning languages is best when in social interactions. When learning our first language we do so by interacting with others (parents, friends, siblings, etc) and group collaboration is has proven to be crucial when learning a second language as well. Combining the findings and conclusions of the previously mentioned studies,

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we decided to focus on teaching preterite and imperfect verb tenses in a daily social context by allowing the students to create their own interactions. We give them loose guidelines, but the freedom is up to them to determine what they are going to say and how they are going to say it. They are required to incorporate certain vocabulary and verb tenses but they are ultimately responsible for the content of their skit. The group portion of the lesson is the main part, but there is going to be a brief warm-up where the students talk in English about what they did over the weekend. After that we would have a lecture portion where the teacher would be in a more traditional teaching setting. We believe this is important because these students only have 2-3 years of English experience and direct instruction is important. This is where we plan to utilize a projector and Powerpoint; it is a simple yet effective use of technology when teaching. Our inspiration for this lesson came from personal experience, as well as our interpretations from the two studies mentioned. We believe group collaboration and interactions between individuals are the most effective methods when learning a new language.

c.) References Herazo Rivera, J. (2012). Using a genre-based approach to promote oral communication in the colombian english classroom. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 14(2), 109-126. Herazo article Using a genre-based approach to promote oral communication in the colombian english classroom tries to argue that the best way for a colombian student or any student for that matter will most effectively learn English by using a genre-based approach to learning. Within this article Herazo describes what genre-based learning is, gives research and statistics to give weight to his point, and describes how a teacher can use this approach of learning. In effect, Herazo believes that the best approach to learning English is by way of oral communication. However, he premises this by not including the old way of teaching EFL oral communication through memorized dialogue with no realistic purpose. This article shows that our lesson plan will enhance the learning of our students. This is due to the fact that our lesson plan directly ties in two activities where the students are engaged in oral communication between the teacher and other students within the class.

Salaberry, M. (2013). Contrasting Preterite and Imperfect use among advanced L2 learners: Judgments of iterated eventualities in Spanish. IRAL: International Review Of Applied Linguistics In Language Teaching, 51(3), 243-270. doi:10.1515/iral-2013-0011

Salaberry contests and concludes in this article that Native L2 speakers, regardless of proficiency level, will not be able to adequately distinguish a proper distinction between ideal

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usage of Preterite and Imperfect verb usage. Essentially, he says that they will confuse the usage of past-tense verbs. This information is of value to my group and I because, to state the obvious, we would be devising a lesson plan to teach English to L2 learners. And while this study was conducted with the second language acquisition being Spanish as opposed to English, the findings can seemingly be reversed to address verb tense usage in L2 learners learning English instead of Spanish. For instance, if native English speakers experience difficulties differentiating between the use of Preterite and Imperfect in Spanish, then it would be safe to surmise that native Spanish speakers would experience difficulties doing the same in English. Although we had to use some imagination and take some liberties with the applications of the findings of this study, I believe that seeing verb tense studies involving L2 learners from a different perspective aided us in developing a lesson from which Spanish speaking students will derive considerable educational value.