New lesson plan: Counting Sheep, Reading Lesson

Pinar Ucak

Counting Sheep, Reading Lesson - Upper Intermediate level

Counting Sheep, Reading Lesson
Upper Intermediate level

Description

In this lesson the students will focus on receptive skills of reading and sub skills gist reading and reading for details. The context of the lesson is being a sleep derived person. In this session students will read and test their understanding. The activities that they will work on during the lesson will help them to derive the meaning from the text by reading the small text i.e. gist reading, and also for reading details. Most of the activities will be reading and then students will be discussing after the reading. Apart from the lead in teacher will play a passive role and will be monitoring students for the errors and to provide assistance.

Materials

Questions handout

Speaking questions handout

Sleep deprived people pictures

Questions handout

Speaking questions handout

Sleep deprived people pictures

Main Aims

To provide gist reading practice using a text about 'the dangers of sleep deprivation'.
To provide detailed reading practice using a text about 'sleep derived people'.

Subsidiary Aims

To provide fluency speaking practice in a dicussion in the context of 'sleep deprived people'.

Procedure (35-46 minutes)

Warmer/Lead-in (3-5 minutes) • To set lesson context and engage students with the context before reading.

Start with a sentence 'Tiredness can kill, take a break' and write it on the board. Then ask sts to work with the person next to them and discuss this sentence for a few minutes. Finally, ask about their ideas.

Pre- Teaching of Vocabulary- Pre- Reading (2-3 minutes) • To enable students to learn vocabulary which is essential for the reading practice.

Show them two pictures of different people and create a short story for these people. While creating the story, ask the sts help you. Then elicit the word 'deprived' from the students. After that focus on its pronunciation and word stress. deprived (adj) /dɪˈprʌɪvd/ There are two syllables in the word and the stress is on the second syllable.

While-Reading/Listening #1 (7-8 minutes) • To provide students with less challenging gist and specific information reading/listening tasks.

Give the handout including the reading text. Write some questions on the board before they start reading for gist. The questions are; - What exactly is the test? - What does it show? - What does the last sentence mean. Firstly, ask the sts read questions then read the first paragraph quickly to find the answers for these questions. Then tell them to discuss their answers with the person next to them. Finally, do whole class feedback.

While-Reading/Listening #2 (15-20 minutes) • To provide students with more challenging detailed, deduction and inference reading/listening tasks.

Ask them to work in pairs. Swap some of the partners before the activity. One of the partners will be A and the other one will be B. A reads 'So much to do, so little time' and 'Good against nature'. B reads 'Sleeping People' and 'Sleep Tips'. Tell them to fold the paper and read the given titles only. Before start reading, remind them to read the questions that they will try to find the answers for them. Tell them to put a tick the questions which is answered in their paragraphs. After they finish, ask all As and Bs mingle around the class and check their answers with the other A and B students. Also tell them to explain their answers giving as much information as they can. Then let them read the other parts of their partners in the reading text to see if their partners leave something out. Finally, give them an answer key to check their own answers.

Post-Reading/Listening (8-10 minutes) • To provide with an opportunity to respond to the text and expand on what they've learned.

Ask them to work with groups of three. I have a bag of questions for the students and I will let them to pick one and tell them to discuss these questions in their own groups. The questions are; - Do you agree with Paul Martin that we live in a sleep deprived society? - Do you think it's wrong that doctors who are on 'night call' sleep so little? - Do you think it should be illegal to drive when you are too tired? * What do you think are the best three sleep tips? While monitoring take notes about their mistakes and do delayed feedback.