Writing Lesson
Elementary level
Description
Materials
Main Aims
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By the end of the lesson, students will have been introduced and practised writing postcards in the context of travelling and holidays.
Subsidiary Aims
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To practise speaking about the genre of the postcard.
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To practise reading for specific information.
Procedure (34-48 minutes)
Show students some pictures of my holiday trips. Elicit as much ideas from them as possible. For example: Where were these photos taken? Which country? Have you been to that country? Would you like to go there? Ask students to discuss in pairs about their holiday trips (outisde of Tunisia/ in Tunisia) When? Where? Who did you go with? What did you do? what was the weather like? Where did you stay? Nominate students for feedback. Pre-teach: sunbathe/ lie in the sun/ sightseing/ surfing/ suntan through pictures Drill then write.
Tell students if they were on a holiday and they want to tell their friends or families about their holidays. Ask them "what do they do?" -> sent a text/email. Ask students to think about before, when there were no mobile phones, then, ask them "what did we use before?" -> postcards. Give students cut-ups and ask them to reorder them in order to get a form of a postcard. Demonstration: gather students around a table, give them cut-ups and ask them which one goes first. Tell them to read quickly and that they don't need to focus on difficult vocabulary words. If they answered incorrectly, do another example. And if they answered correctly give each group their cut-ups and tell them to start working. After demonstarting and to chech their understanding ask students if they need to read quickly or slowly and ask them if they need to focus on difficult words. Have the 2 groups check each other's work and then display the answer key on the projector. Draw a postcard on the board to check if they understood the layout and the components of the postcard. Give the students questions to answer: what's the weather like in Corsica? What did they do most of the time? Why couldn't they lie in the sun yesterday? What are they going to do tomorrow? Demonstrate the first question then ask them to answer the questions individually. Have them check their answers in pairs then provide the answer key on the board.
Elicit from the students the different components of a postcard in general starting from the postcard already given to them which are where we are staying, what we are doing now, the things we do more often, what we did in the previous days and what we're going to do in the following days. Elicit the tenses used for each component. Give the students another postcard to compare and ask them what's the difference between the two. Tell them that we can send postcards about good or bad holidays
Provide students with postcard templates, stamps and a model of a postcard. Ask the students to imagine they are on a holiday and that they're going to write a postcard to their families. Tell them that they could talk about good or bad things. Monitor and help students when needed
After finishing writing, stick their writings on the walls and ask them to stand up and read each other's work. Nominate students for feedback about what they've read: place they want/ don't want to visit, postcard particularly like... Do some delayed error correction on the board and ask students to correct.