Vocabulary Lesson Plan

Teacher: Jesus Morales

Lesson Plan Title: Academic Words in Context
Subject: Vocabulary
ELD Level & Number of Students: Advanced; 16 students
Lesson Duration: 60 minutes

Learning Objectives: This is our purpose in this lesson
Students will be able to identify and understand the use of academic words in an
authentic academic experiment.

Student Learning Outcomes: This is our accountability for student learning
Students will be able to:
Identify and understand the precise use of academic words in context.
Identify the key terms and key points of a lecture, especially through the use of
technical terms, normally made up by word collocations, that define abstract
phenomena.
Identify and understand the idiomatic expressions used in an academic context.


Differentiating Instruction: This is how I address the needs of ALL students
Scaffolding
o Students will have access to the video of an authentic academic
experiment-Stanford prison experiment, as well as the transcripts and
background information.
o Students will have multiple chances to clarify their understanding of the
video in order to build their conceptual knowledge for the oncoming
vocabulary instruction.
o The academic words, technical words, and idioms will be examined in
their context in order to establish their purpose (precision, technicality,
abstractness).
o Students will be guided through the identification and definition of
technical and academic words.
Differentiating Instruction
o Academic words will be provided in different complexity levels to meet
the needs of the students differing proficiencies/comfort with academic
English.
o Visual/auditory learners with the sufficient listening, vocabulary, and
background knowledge will have a chance to follow along with the
authentic material.
o Those learners who require the extra support will have the transcripts to
check their comprehension, and will be able to follow along with the class
talks.
o Technical terms will be revised if necessary to colloquial terms.
Relevance
o The students wish to enroll into universities in the future and this is a
realistic example of what they may encounter in a psychology class.
o The students may practice their note taking skills, and assess their comfort
with an authentic academic experiment.

Resources & Materials: This is what is needed for this lesson and this is how I will
manage these resources/materials
Materials:
YouTube video- Dr. Zimbardo- Critical Social Psychology (2/30)
Handout with a list of academic words, technical terms, and idiomatic
expressions.
Personal dictionary

Management:
I will provide the students with materials as they become necessary.
I will direct the students attention to the most relevant words that the students
need to pay attention to.

Anticipatory Set: Here is what we are doing today! (5 mins)
Introduction-
How many of you are planning on going on to college?
Have you had the chance to visit a lecture here at USD?
For those of you who are interested, I want to give you a taste of what the future
holds...
-Introduce the field of social psychology, and the use of experiments to understand
the human condition.

Purpose:
Students have a chance to start thinking about their academic goals.
Students have a chance to use this as a practice run learning and taking notes
about an unfamiliar academic field.
State the purpose of the class and the goals for the day.
Warm-Up: Here is what we are doing today! (20 mins)
Introduce key terms-
(1) Experiment (research)-(n.)- An orderly procedure used test a hypothesis and to learn
something about the hypothesis.
(2) Role (social role)-(n.) The appropriate behavior someone is supposed to show,
according to what society expects of them.
(3) Conform- (v.) To act as one is expected to, usually in order to fit in with a group.
(4) Context (social context)- (n.) the culture and environment that people live in.

Students will watch the YouTube video on the Stanford prison experiment
-Think-Pair-Share: What was the video about?
Use the key terms to start the conversation of the experiment, and to clarify key
points.
(1) Experiment involving the role of people and the use of power,
(2) Situated in a mock prison,
(3) Peoples behavior started to change in order to suit the situation.

Purpose: Students will have the opportunity to build some background knowledge about
what the experiment was about, and how it was conducted.
This will facilitate the later in-depth discussion about new vocabulary words.

Instruction and Guided Practice: Let me show youmodeling I do (30 mins)
Replay the YouTube video and stop after every 1:30 minutes to discuss
vocabulary.
Give them the handout.
Directions- "Underline the key terms, and write any other words you think are
important on the back.
Present-Practice: Lead the definition on new words, especially through the use of
context (meaning focused input).
Present-Practice: Identify the key terms at the end of the video.
Practice making a tentative definition for academic terms that were not brought up
by the students.
Collaborative practice: ongoing whole-class definition of terms and writing them
on the white boards.
Pause for questions on vocabulary or context.


Independent Practice: Now you try it!...scaffoldingYOU do (5 mins)
Final Exercise (Exit Slip)
Students will be write a sentence using five of the academic words covered during
class and hand it in before exiting the class.


Assessment: Show me what you have learned
Informal assessments while students are conducting in-class exercises.

Reflection: What was learned today










Academic Words (1=most frequent, 10=least frequent)
Roles (1) .
Experiment/Research (1) .
Context (1) .
Authority (1) .
Identity (1) .
Method (1) .
Conclude (2) .
Civilian (4) .
Compound (5) .
Classic (7) .
Conform (8) .
Arbitrary- (8) .
Bias (8) .
Degrade- .
Mock- .

Technical Words
Power relation- .
Social group- .
Structural factor- .
Situated knowledge- .

Idioms and Phrasal Verbs
Ground Breaking- .
Drawn into- .
Pushed the boundaries- .
Aftermath- .




The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, Professor Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues conducted an experiment at Stanford
University, designed to look at how ordinary men might behave if given the role of guards and
prisoners. Their research was groundbreaking, but it also raised a number of questions. The
subject matter, outcomes, and methods are all of continuing interest to contemporary researchers.

Dr Caroline says, Zimbardo carried out his study in the aftermath of World War II, and there
was a lot of interest and concern at that time about those events. Also at that time was the
aftermath of Vietnam, and again there was a lot of interest in the atrocities and murder of many
civilians by soldiers in that war. There was a lot of interest among psychologist in how this could
have happened, and how ordinary people could have been drawn into those events.

Dr. Bianca says, He was very concerned with the impact of social roles and what they did to the
way humans behave. I think he was concerned with trying to understand the impact of social
context. In terms of his work, he was concerned with what happens to people when they take on
particular social roles, and when they become part of particular social groups.

At the beginning of the study, people were arrested at their homes by real police officers. They
asked if this had anything to do with the experiment. The police officers refused to answer. This
was a very unsettling way to start the study.

Zimbardo brought them to a mock prison created in the basement of the university. Then he
divided the group into prisoners and guards. The guards had a guards uniforms, sunglasses, and
sticks. The prisoners wore loose-fitting smocks and sandals. The prisoners spent 24-hours a day
in the prison, and the guards came and went in shifts.

Part of what Zimbardo was doing was observing what would take place in this context, and how
those roles of prisoner or guard would shape or change the way people behaved.

Prof. Zimbardo: The guards fell into their jobs. Some of them like it, some of them disliked it,
but it was a job that they did. They gave commands and the prisoners followed them.

They found ways to punish prisoners if they misbehaved. It was the case that initially the
prisoners did show some signs of disbelief and rebellion about what was happening. But after a
short while, they fell into their roles and became submissive, dependent, and powerless, and
showed signs of stress, anxiety, and depression.

Dr. Z: Things had gotten so bad that we no longer had a group of prisoners, we had individuals
who believed they were prisoners and struggling for survival; no longer caring about the other
prisoners or their fellow students.

Meanwhile, the guards got into their roles and the level of violence escalated over a period of
days. They began to humiliate and degrade the prisoners, and to find every opportunity to exert
their power and influence over the prisoners.

Prof. Z.: Some of the prisoners had to clean toilet bowls with their bare hands. The guards
would taunt, humiliate, and degrade the prisoners in front of each other, and they would exert
arbitrary control over the prisoners.

This escalation of aggression was so extreme that after a period of six days, the experiment had
to be brought to a halt before the scheduled time.

Prof. Z. showed something important, because its not about who you are internally that matters,
its about the social context.

Zimbardo wanted to move away from the idea that we could attribute extreme behavior on
individual personalities. Instead, he wanted to show that social structural factors had a role on
peoples behaviors. Its about the group you belong to, and how you take on identities. This was
a radical way of looking at peoples behavior.

There was also a lot of debate about the role of ethics and morals in human experiments.