Teaching Tip: EFL Lesson Scenario and Plan - 5

Name:

Angelica Torres

Economy:

Chile

School:

Sara Braun Technical High School

Subject:

English as a Foreign Language

Tip:

USING THE NETWORK’S TEXTBOOK: “A GLANCE AT THE CULTURAL INHERITANCE OF MAGALLANES” AS A PEDAGOGICAL RESOURCE TO PROMOTE MEANINGFUL LEARNING

1. DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTIVITY:

In 2005 a group of teachers from public and subsidised schools from Punta Arenas , and members of the English Language Teachers Network published a textbook to support teachers of English in aspects of interest such as tourism and regional patrimony, entitled “A glance at the cultural Inheritance of Magallanes”. This book is the result of a “Proyecto de mejoramiento educativo”( PME) applied for the English Language Teachers Network in 2003.

The purpose of creating this book was to provide a collection of short reading texts that encourage students to broaden their knowledge of the area where they live and to value its historical heritage through the development of varied task-based activities. In this context, language learning is considered not only as an opportunity for students to get familiar with different aspects of their region like history, gastronomy, geography, flora, fauna, museums and monuments, but also as a process through which learners will support collective and individual responsibilities when applying group work as well as have a chance to revise, consolidate and expand their command of the English language. Therefore, the contents and the topics dealt with in the textbook have been selected according our own social and cultural surroundings, in order to enrich the programme for the areas related to Tourism in Polyvalent and Technical High Schools of the Region of Magallanes.

Since this is a supplementary textbook, one of the teachers belonging to the network, has adapted one of the units presented in the book in order to promote students’ speaking abilities. Angelica Torres works with a group of students in the field of tourism in a Polyvalent Public school in the city of Punta Arenas. Using the textbook as a starting point, specifically the lesson “Monuments and important places of the city”, where her students could get some information about the most visited places in our city, our colleague challenged her students to put in practice the key language learnt to describe places and monuments in a real city tour .

This last activity was video taped to be analyzed and commented by the students. They had a very positive feeling after this because they understood and valued how important the English language is and the usefulness of this tool in the tourism area, besides they stated that what they learnt in this lesson was really meaningful and transferable to their immediate reality.

2. LESSON PLAN

Name of the Lesson: Monuments and Important places of the city.

Aim: Students will be able to describe monuments and some outstanding places of Punta Arenas in English.

Content: Vocabulary related to places in a city (square, streets, building,etc).

Verbs in past tense.

Use of past participles, passive voice, relative clauses.

Ability: Speaking

Activities:

1.  The teacher shows pictures of some monuments of the city and ask the students to name them and to match them with some short descriptions presented in English.

2.  The students reread the descriptions and underline sentences in passive voice used to describe the monuments. They understand the meaning of them as well as the new vocabulary which appeared in the paragraphs by answering some questions in English orally.

3.  They bring some information to the class about other important monuments and fill in a form specially designed to write a correct description in English, like this:

• ……………………………Monument
  * It is located in …………………….Avenue
  * It was built to………………………………
  * By…………………………………………..
  * In …………………………………………..
  * It is made of………………………………

4.  They put all this into practice doing an activity “in situ” which consists of describing the monument of the main square as well as “The Cerro de la Cruz”, a panoramic view of the city. Here the students pretended to be tourist guides performing a city tour, presenting all the information in English.

Teacher's name: Angelica Torres
School: Liceo Polivalente Sara Braun
Students area of study: Tourism
City: Punta Arenas
Network: English Language Teachers Network Punta Arenas
Network’s Coordinator: Silvia Ojeda Vera

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pRnuO77npM&layer_token=e495559cfb6bab06