Elementary English

Unit 7: Using activities alongside teaching an English text: the importance of planning and preparation

Using activities alongside teaching an English text: the importance of planning and preparation

Introduction .................................................................................................... 1

Learning outcomes ......................................................................................... 1

1 Using the English textbook .......................................................................... 2

Discussion............................................................................................... 2

2 Creating language learning opportunities .................................................... 3

3 Creating multiple activities based on a text ................................................. 6

Discussion............................................................................................... 7

4 Preparing a lesson plan .............................................................................. 8

Discussion............................................................................................... 9

5 Summary ................................................................................................... 11

6 Resources ................................................................................................. 12

Resource 1: ‘The Puri Boy’ ....................................................................... 12

Activities ................................................................................................ 13

Resource 2: Activities to encourage speaking and listening in English .... 14

1 What Did You See? ........................................................................... 14

2 Asking the Explorers .......................................................................... 15

3 Guess What I Saw ............................................................................. 15

4 Doing What Was Said ........................................................................ 16

5 Comparing ......................................................................................... 16

Resource 3: Managing group work ........................................................... 17

Resource 4: Lesson plan formats ............................................................. 18

7 Related units ............................................................................................. 21

References ................................................................................................... 21

Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... 21

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, the content of this unit is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

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Introduction Young students love to play and use their imaginations. They like new experiences, of course, but they also like routines where they can have repeated opportunities to practise new skills and ideas. They also thrive on variety. All of these factors mean that you should be ready to plan a range of activities around any text that you choose for your English class.

There is so much you can do with a story, poem or even a newspaper article. Any text that you choose for English lessons can be the starting point for helping students to develop English language skills through a variety of activities linked to this text. This unit aims to give you pointers for planning a variety of such activities and also for managing group work.

Learning outcomes By the end of this unit, you should have developed:

• knowledge of how to extend the potential of a text or a textbook lesson for teaching and learning English

• understanding of how carefully planned activities can promote learning English

• skills in classroom management.

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1 Using the English textbook To learn English well, students need a variety of language experiences organised by you. The National Focus Group on Teaching of English (NCERT, 2006) says that a single textbook used over a year is ‘inadequate’ to learn and teach English effectively. But in The Child’s Language and the Teacher (Resource 2), Professor Krishna Kumar writes that this is what usually happens in our schools:

Every teacher in our country is expected to ‘cover’ the textbook; that is, she is expected to finish each lesson given in the textbook one by one, doing the exercises that the textbook offers, giving homework concerning each lesson, and ensuring that children have a mastery over the content of each lesson. There is no doubt that these expectations are counterproductive as far as the teaching of language is concerned.

Activity 1: Using the English textbook

Read Professor Kumar’s words again very carefully. Then think about these questions in relation to your own experience at school:

• How far did the textbook help you to learn English? • How did the teacher help you to learn English? • Can you remember an activity – in school or outside school – that

helped you learn English?

Now think about your experience as a teacher:

• How far do you feel you have to ‘cover’ the textbook? • How difficult or easy is it to teach English based on the textbook? • Why do you think Professor Kumar says that in-depth coverage of a

single textbook is ‘counterproductive’ for language learning? • What has helped you, as a teacher, to better teach English to students?

Discussion

Both research and experience have shown that fluency in English cannot be developed by using just one textbook. You may recall moments when you were a young student where a teacher – or a family member – augmented your textbook learning with additional activities such as:

• pointing out advertisement hoardings • helping you to read additional texts such as newspapers • encouraging you to look in a dictionary to find the meaning of words and

use new vocabulary in daily conversation.

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Fortunately, since 2005, the national curriculum and most state curriculums have given teachers the freedom to choose and plan additional activities based on the needs of the learners in their classrooms.

So think of your English textbook as the starting point for a range of interesting and meaningful language learning activities where you can use your creativity and teaching skills.

End of activity.

2 Creating language learning opportunities Language learning opportunities are available all around you, in your local world, social relationships, media and wider community. Any lesson or text that you choose for classroom teaching will have some connection with the world. Your job is to understand the connections and use them as learning opportunities.

For instance, if you are using Unit 9 of the Marigold textbook for Class IV, you will see that the topic of the language lesson is about ‘Going to buy a book’ and using the library. This topic immediately prompts a number of questions and potential activities:

• Who has been to a bookshop or to a library? • What did you see there? • Did you see any books or other writing in English? • Can we make a library in our classroom? • What kinds of words and sentences in English do we hear or read in a

bookshop or a library? • How would we speak politely to people in these places? • What questions would we ask? • What information would we find? • Can we invite someone from a local bookshop or library to talk to the

class?

For every English textbook unit, you can explore these kinds of connections.

There are also everyday opportunities to integrate regular English in the classroom. When you are teaching you can give instructions in English for activities such as forming lines or groups, distributing books/materials, moving from one class to another, conducting assemblies, etc. These activities can promote English learning in familiar, routine contexts. By

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using English frequently to give instructions, you create opportunities for students to listen and respond to you to English.

Although the textbook is a useful guide and source of ideas, you can also create a variety of activities based on any story or poem of your choice, or a story or poem that students choose. This unit will give you a few ideas for planning such activities.

Activity 2: Planning activities around a text

There are many English language activities, such as games, craftwork, role play or peer discussions, you can organise for young students around any text. For older students you can plan literacy activities such as writing alternative endings, dialogues and play scripts, book-making, grouping words with the same sounds, finding information, classifying words and phrases, labelling pictures, picture description, gap-filling, completing sentences, and writing a review.

It is very important to give students clear instructions when organising an activity in class so that they understand what is required in terms of their behaviour and their outputs. It is good practice to repeat instructions and encourage students to repeat them to confirm their understanding. Therefore, when you plan activities from a text, you should consider how you are going to give instructions and recognise that you have opportunities to practise and speak English for yourself in this role.

Read Resource 1 for an example of the range of activities you can plan from a single, simple story. As you read, note how the activities reinforce:

• the learning of common nouns and simple verbs in English • sentences and phrases in English that recur in the story.

Do you think your students would enjoy these kinds of activities? Why, or why not?

End of activity.

Case Study 1: Mrs Suresh adapts a textbook lesson on transport for her class

Mrs Suresh teaches English in Class VI in a regional medium school in a deprived locality of Bangalore. Her students have been learning English since Class I, but even after studying English for six years, the students’ skills in the language are very poor. Although they know some English vocabulary, they have difficulty framing sentences and are unable to read independently, despite being able to recognise letters of the alphabet. Mrs Suresh had recently been transferred to the school and was determined to

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improve her students’ speaking and reading skills. Read her account of how she made a lesson more meaningful to her students to stimulate their English learning.

The lesson in the English textbook was on transport. I wanted to make the lesson interesting and relevant, so I started by asking the students to list names of vehicles that they know in English. They did this without any problems. The board was filled with the names of a variety of vehicles, including brand names of cars and motorcycles.

I soon learned that only two students had ever travelled on a train and that none of them had travelled in the recently commissioned Metro train. I felt this was unfortunate, since the Metro tracks ran right in front of the school building and students saw it every day. That afternoon I proposed to the headmistress that the school should take the students for a ride in the Metro. The headmistress was enthusiastic and gained permission for the trip and funding for the tickets from the Block Education Officer.

Accompanied by another teacher, I then took 32 very excited students for their first ride on the Metro. The week before the journey I prepared the students with a series of language activities by:

• helping students read bilingual pamphlets in Kannada and in English, with a list of ‘dos and don’ts’ while travelling on the Metro

• teaching them how to ask for a ticket at the counter in Kannada and in English

• making them practise in English what they might say to their fellow passengers if anyone asked them why they were riding the Metro

• instructing them to write down in English the regular announcements that are made in Kannada and English in the Metro station.

The normally boisterous students were on their best behaviour, and they used what they had learned in English lessons to:

• stand in the queue to buy their own tickets • say ‘thank you’ to the guard on duty • read the billboards on the platform • listened to the station announcements in Kannada and in English • say ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’ to anyone who was willing to strike up a

conversation with them.

Their journey lasted less than an hour but it was a memorable experience.

I felt the trip was well worth the effort that went into organising it, and the amount of English that the students learned exceeded my expectations. Later I found that the textbook lesson on transport was much easier to teach, because now the students had their own experiences of transport.

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The journey changed the way that I taught English. Before I teach any lesson from the English textbook, I now look for ways to prepare students for the topic by giving them a personal experience where they can practise reading, speaking and listening to English.

End of case study.

Pause for thought

If you cannot take your class to a Metro station, how could you create these same language activities in the classroom? Role play and drama are effective ways to practise language for specific purposes. In the example of the Metro, students can take on the roles of ticket sellers, conductors, passengers and shopkeepers. Metro posters, announcements, pamphlets and tickets can be made in English. The classroom can become a Metro station for a day, with students making imaginary journeys between lessons and practising their English for travelling as they go!

3 Creating multiple activities based on a text Activity 3: Brainstorming around a text

‘Brainstorming’ is a technique used to produce a variety of ideas. The focus is on rapidly generating as many ideas as possible without being critical about any of them. People who participate in a brainstorm should feel free to contribute as many thoughts and ideas as they can, with other’s thoughts often sparking another idea. These ideas should not be discussed until the end of the process and all ideas (no matter how bizarre or irrelevant) should be recorded. When the brainstorm is complete, there can be a discussion of what emerged and possibly some ordering or prioritising of the different ideas. Brainstorming is a technique that encourages everyone to get involved in a task and generates a rich variety of outcomes.

For this activity, use the short story below or choose one from your own English textbook.

Raja

Raja called Shyama to come and play with him. Shyama said that he had to work and could not play. Raja went to a field with a ball. Raja saw honey bees and called them to play. The honey bees said they could not play as they had to work. He then saw ants. Raja called out, ‘Ants! Ants! Come let us play!’ ‘No, we cannot play. We have to work,’ said the ants. Raja went

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home. He helped his father at work. Father said, ‘You are a good boy.’ Raja felt happy.

With several colleagues, brainstorm and list possible activities based on the story of Raja’s search for playmates. Think about activities that might involve the following elements:

• crafts • games • drama, dialogue or role plays • reading • writing.

When you have generated a list of ideas, discuss them in more detail together, considering their relevance, their practicality and their potential to be used to teach English. Decide on up to three activities that you consider most likely to implement – some of these activities could well combine different elements.

Discussion

Here is what a group of Class III teachers thought of for the story of Raja:

• Craft activity: Make insect and animal masks. • Drama/role play: Act out the dialogue, adding other animals and friends

of Raja using the masks made in the craft activity. • Reading: Read the story aloud together from the chalkboard or the

textbook, looking at the sentences ‘Come let us play’ and ‘No, we cannot play’. Substitute and read together other words in the sentences, such as ‘Come let us dance’, ‘Come let us cook’ or ‘Come let us sing’, and ‘No, we cannot dance/cook/sing’.

• Writing: Draw a series of scenes from the story with speech bubbles and write in the dialogues.

Think of other simple stories like ‘Raja’ that you could use in your classroom. To help you, Resource 1 gives you some ideas to try out with a different story, ‘The Puri Boy’. You will also find Resource 2 (adapted from Krishna Kumar) useful in planning speaking and listening activities: games like ‘What Did You See?’ and ‘Guessing the Right Picture’ are easily adapted to any story or English textbook lesson. When you have chosen a story and thought of some activities, try out your ideas with your colleagues. Take their feedback and revise your ideas, if need be. You will be asked shortly to take an idea that you have generated and make a lesson plan to use it with your class.

End of activity.

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Activity 4: Organising group work for multiple activities

Now watch the video below about a teacher who organises multiple activities based on a story. The class has listened to, and then read, the story of The Enormous Turnip. The teacher puts the class into small groups. and each group works on a different activity related to the story, such as drawing illustrations and revising key vocabulary. You may also find it useful to read the video’s transcript. Please note that the video will be available in early 2014.

After watching the video, discuss the strategies that the teacher uses to organise the class into groups. How does she distribute resources needed for the activity? What is she doing to manage the class? Notice how she uses both Hindi and English to support students in the activities.

What are your strategies for grouping students or for moving students from one activity to another? Resource 3 offers you some ideas about how to organise groupwork.

End of activity.

4 Preparing a lesson plan Activity 5: Preparing a lesson plan

1. Use the video and your work in Activity 2 to prepare a detailed plan based on a story or another short text such as a poem. You can refer to Resource 4 for some formats for writing lesson plans, but many teachers develop their own format to suit their teaching style and preferences.

How much time will you need for each activity, including time needed for giving instructions, grouping students, moving equipment and distributing resources? For example, for ‘The Puri Boy’ story (Resource 1), you could spend the suggested amount of time for the following activities:

o narrating or reading the text – 20 minutes o action rhyme – 15 minutes (including instructing students to stand

in a circle and listen, repeat, etc.) o mask-making – 25 minutes (including distributing resources and

repeating instructions).

As you can see, one class period is not enough time to do everything well. Think about planning over two or more periods, depending on the nature of your activities. Start to split the lesson into different parts and put timings next to each part.

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2. Next think of what English words and phrases can you use for the activities, to organise students and get their attention? Here are a few examples: o Turn around and face each other. o Form a circle. o Move around quietly. o Listen to me. o Is everyone ready? o Please stop and look at me. o It’s time to finish now.

Now come up with some phrases of your own related to your activity, your classroom and your students.

3. Make a note of the English language learning that will happen in the activities. What words or phrases do you want students to practise? How will you make sure these are used?

4. Make a list of the resources you will need. How will you organise the distribution of the resources? For example, you could: o lay out the necessary resources on tables beforehand and instruct

how many students should stand at each table o ask students to group themselves and ask one child from each

group to pick up the resources o call out names of students and ask them to collect the resources.

5. If there are multiple activities, how will you organise the students to change from one activity to another?

6. Lastly, you should plan for contingencies: after all, students may not be interested in participating or they may not understand your instructions. You should be ready to quickly reorganise your activity or rephrase your instructions. Over time, you will find that activities become easier to organise as students get used to the routines. What might go wrong or get in the way of your plan?

Discussion

Discuss your plan with a colleague, reworking it if necessary.

You can then try out your lesson plan with your class. When the class is over, think about these questions in order for you to learn from the outcome and use this learning to plan activities into another lesson:

• What did you enjoy most? Why? • What did the students enjoy? • What could have been planned better? • How far did the activities give students opportunities to practise English? • What opportunities were there for you to practise English yourself? • What would you do differently next time?End of activity.

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Continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE)

Description

CCE logo.

Observe the students while they are doing the activities and note down in your notebook any one of the following (each week you could plan for one observation):

• which students are unable to follow instructions in English • English words used by the students while conversing with each other • which students are able to use complete sentences in English • which students are reluctant to participate in activities because they do

not feel confident • English phrases that students are able to reproduce in different contexts • what students say when you ask them to talk about their activities – note

down their vocabulary, sentence structure, confidence and independence.

This is only a suggested list; you can observe any aspect of English that you wish to focus on. Even though you will normally select only one parameter for assessment observation in a week, if you get a chance to observe any aspect of some other assessment parameter, do make a record of that in the your notes.

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5 Summary This unit has emphasised the importance of planning in organising activities for students to learn and practise English. Initially you may have to plan in detail, including strategies for managing the class and groups; but over time you will find that both you and your students will become familiar with basic class rules for conducting the activities. Students will pick up English naturally, and all of you will enjoy the learning process.

Now reflect and make some notes on the following:

• Identify three key ideas or skills you have learned in this unit. • Identify your strengths in planning English activities based on a text. • What skills for planning around a text would you like to develop further?

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6 Resources Resource 1: ‘The Puri Boy’

Once upon a time, an old woman and her husband lived alone in a little old house. They had no children. One day the woman made a puri shaped like a boy. She carefully rolled out the dough, and cut out a very nice-looking boy. What a fine looking boy he was!

The old woman put him in the pan full of hot oil, to fry. After he was fully fried and fluffy, she carefully lifted him from the pan. Up jumped the puri boy, and he ran out the door saying, ‘Run, run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me! I’m the puri boy!’

The old woman and the old man ran after him, but they could not catch him.

And so the Puri boy ran and ran. While he was running, he met a cow.

‘Moo,’ said the cow. ‘You look very fine! Fine enough to eat!’ and the cow started to chase the little boy.

But the puri boy ran faster, saying, ‘I ran away from an old woman, I ran away from an old man, and I can run away from you!’

And he laughed, ‘Run, run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me! I’m the puri boy!’

The cow ran after the puri boy, but it could not catch him.

While he ran, he met a cat.

‘Meow,’ said the cat. ‘You look good enough to eat. I’m going to eat you, puri boy.’

But the puri boy just laughed, ‘I ran away from an old woman, I ran away from an old man, I ran away from a cow, and I can run away from you!’

And so he ran singing, ‘Run, run, as fast as you can! You can’t catch me! I’m the puri boy!’

The cat ran after the puri boy, but it could not catch him. The puri boy was proud that he could run so fast.

‘Nobody can catch me,’ he thought. So he kept on running until he met a fox. He wanted to tell the fox how he ran faster than all the others.

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‘Mr Fox,’ he said, ‘I ran away from an old woman, I ran away from an old man, I ran away from a cow, I ran away from a cat, and I can run away from you.’

‘Why would I want to eat you?’ asked Mr Fox. ‘I do not like puris.’

The puri boy was happy to hear this. He stopped running. Immediately, the fox ate him up. The fox said, ‘Sorry, puri boy – I do like puris.’

Activities

1. Extend the telling of the story by introducing other animal characters, such as a dog, goat, ox, bullock, elephant, etc.

2. For your mask-making craftwork, draw on a sheet of paper any character from the story. Cut out the eyes. Punch a hole on either side of the mask. Thread the holes and knot up the ends. Additional vocabulary can be reinforced through craft instructions, e.g. ‘draw’, ‘cut’, ‘string’, etc. – help the students to associate words with what they are doing while making their masks. Label resources in English.

3. Teach this action rhyme: o Run, run, as fast as you can o Jump, jump, as high as you can o Skip, skip, as far as you can o Walk, walk, as far as you can.

4. Encourage students to come up with other characters like puri boy, such as a talking car, a talking doll, a talking chapati, etc.

5. Pair up the students. Ask one child to be a talking puri and the other child to talk to the puri. They can start by using the words and phrases of the story. Help them to form other phrases in English, such as ‘Oh no! Don’t eat me!’

6. Ask students to identify word(s) hidden in these words: ‘catch’, ‘woman’, ‘late’, ‘fast’, ‘dough’.

7. Ask students to think what would happen if the fox didn’t eat the puri boy.

8. Ask for six volunteers from the class to play this game. o Draw a box on the floor with five rows. Make a child stand in each

row. Each child represents a character in the story. The sixth child is the ‘puri boy’ who stands outside the box. The child in each row can hop only within that row and they have to try to ‘catch’ the ‘puri boy’, who is the only child who can run across all rows. The ‘puri boy’ tries to cross all the rows without getting caught by the students inside their respective rows. The game continues with other ‘puri boys and girls’.

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Resource 2: Activities to encourage speaking and listening in English

We have reproduced below some of the activities suggested in Krishna Kumar’s book The Child’s Language and the Teacher (published in 1986). To read the full list of activities, go to Chapter 2 (titled ‘Some activities’) in an online copy of the book.

These are easy language games to encourage speaking and listening in English. They can easily be applied to the topics and vocabulary of English textbook lessons:

• What Did You See? • Asking the Explorers • Guess What I Saw • Doing What Was Said • Comparing • How Did You Make That? • Acting Out • Analysing a Picture • Guessing the Right Picture • Making a Story • Where Do You Live?

Here is the extract from The Child’s Language and the Teacher:

These are just some of the dozens of activities any teacher can organise in any ordinary classroom. Each time an activity is repeated with some little change, it will be received with even greater enthusiasm by the children than it got last time. So do each activity any number of times, adding something new each time. Keep a record of the variations so that you can introduce your innovations to a new colleague. Nearly each activity described here can become the starting point of a dozen variations.

1 What Did You See?

Stage 1: Ask one child to go out of the room, see what is happening outside, and tell the class what he saw. For instance, he might report that he saw a truck, two shops and a bicycle.

Stage 2: Now the rest of the children, preferably sitting in a circle, will ask him questions, one by one, and one question per child. For instance, a child may ask: ‘What was hanging from the bicycle’s handle?’ The reply may be: ‘A basket.’ The next question may be, ‘What colour was the basket?’

Stage 3: When one round of questioning is complete, the teacher will ask the child who has gone out: ‘Who asked the best question?’ Supposing he

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says, ‘Shashi asked the best question; the teacher will ask: ‘What was the question?’

Stage 4: The next round starts with Shashi. Ask her to see something that the earlier child had not seen. When she comes back, ask children to come up with new questions – not the ones they have already asked.

2 Asking the Explorers

Send a small group of children, no more than five or six, to study some specific object or place near the school or even inside the school building. For example, they may be sent to examine a cluster of trees, a tea stall, a broken bridge, or a nest. Ask them to explore it carefully and discuss among themselves everything they notice.

While the explorer group is away, tell the rest of the class about the object in some detail. For example, if the explorers have gone to examine a tea stall, tell the class about the things available at the stall, who runs it, where do the things available there come from, etc.

When the explorer group comes back, it will face questions from the class. The teacher can also have her turn.

Next time, send a different group.

3 Guess What I Saw

One child goes out, stands at the door or at some distance from the class, and selects one of the hundreds of things she sees around (it could be anything – tree, leaf, squirrel, bird, wires, pole, grass, stones). When she comes back, she says just one sentence about the thing she has in mind. For example, she might say, ‘What I saw is brown.’

Now every child in the class gets one chance to ask more about the thing and guess what it was. For example, questioning may go like this:

Child 1: ‘Is it thin?’

Answer: ‘No.’

Child 2: ‘How big is it?’

Answer: ‘It’s quite big’.

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Child 3: ‘Is it as big as a chair?’

Answer: ‘No, it’s smaller than a chair.’

Child 4: ‘Can it turn?’ …

Finally when the thing has been guessed correctly, some children may object to the answers they got for their questions. For instance, someone may point out that the colour was not brown but clay-like. In such situations, the teacher’s role is very important, as someone who can help children establish subtle distinctions between meanings.

4 Doing What Was Said

Ask children to listen and do what you tell them to do. Start with simple things to do, and ask the whole class to do them together. Examples:

‘Touch your head’.

‘Close your right eye.’

‘Clap on your head.’

Divide the class in two groups. The teacher will give instructions to the first group, and the children of this group will now give similar instructions to the second group. Gradually make your instructions more complicated, for example:

‘Touch your head with both hands, then touch your right ear with your right hand.’

‘Close both eyes, touch your neighbour, ask him to give you his left hand.’

When children of one group give instructions to the other group, they need not repeat everything they have heard. Encourage them to make up new instructions.

5 Comparing

Make sets of similar-looking things, such as leaves of two or more trees, flowers of different plants, stones, pieces of paper cut in different shapes etc.

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Ask children to listen to the description you give of one of the things in a set, and on the basis of the description they must decide which one you are thinking of. Example:

‘I’m thinking of a leaf that is smooth and long, and it has even edges.’

After doing this activity a few times, ask children to take turns to choose and describe. Change things each time you do this activity. Identify more subtle features each time.

Resource 3: Managing group work

Group work can be an effective way to manage large classes, and classes of mixed ages and mixed abilities. It is also an opportunity for you to separate specific groups for a more focused reading session with you while the other groups are engaged in other tasks. In this way, every child will have focused reading with you at some time during the week. When you read with a small group, you have an opportunity to assess individual students’ reading readiness and reading development.

It is important to think about what you will be doing while students are busy with their group work. You might go around to each group and monitor their progress during the lesson. When you begin group work, it is often useful to ensure that students are doing the task, but you should also encourage students to try to work independently – even if only for ten minutes. This will build their independent learning skills.

Effective group work in the classroom depends on everyone knowing what the rules are. When you develop class rules for group work, make sure they are simple and easy for students to follow, for example:

• We work quietly on our own when the teacher is working with another group.

• If we need help, we wait for our turn. • We can ask a friend for help, quietly. • We make sure everyone in the group contributes. • We follow the teacher’s instructions promptly so we do not waste time.

Make time to involve students in creating these rules. If students are involved, they are much more likely to follow these rules and see the reasons for having them. Do not have too many rules – not more than four or five. Display the rules in the classroom. Refer to them frequently. Be ready to change the rules in response to students’ and your own requirements.

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Resource 4: Lesson plan formats

These formats were contributed by teachers. You can adapt them to suit your own preferences.

Weekly planning format (1)

Day Language focus

Activities Resources Time Classroom management

Reflections

Weekly planning format (2)

Day Focus words/sentences

Listening activities

Speaking activities

Reading activities

Writing activities

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

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Daily planning format (1)

Daily planning format (2)

1. What do I want students to learn today? 2. My plan for the day. 3. What worked? Why? 4. What did not work? Why? 5. Students who need additional help and my plan for them.

Individual lesson plan

Timing Resources Teacher Students Key learning

15 mins

Story book Read story of tiger

Listen and note down characters mentioned

Listen to story in English

Make notes in English

5 mins Pens and paper

Write instructions on board about groups and resources

Listen and follow instructions to sit in groups with resources

Follow instructions in English

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7 Related units • TDU 5, English storytelling: using questions, adapting texts, extracting

learning. • TDU 6, Reading English: shared reading and guided reading.

References Kumar, K. (1986) The Child’s Language and the Teacher: A Handbook. United Nations Children’s Fund.

NCERT (2006) Position Paper, National Focus Group on Teaching of English

National Council of Educational Research and Teaching (NCERT) (2006) The National Focus Group on Teaching and English. Available from: http://www.ncert.nic.in/new_ncert/ncert/rightside/links/pdf/focus_group/english.pdf (accessed 16 September 2013).

Acknowledgements The content of this teacher development unit was developed collaboratively and incrementally by the following educators and academics from India and The Open University (UK) who discussed various drafts, including the feedback from Indian and UK critical readers: Mythili Ramchand and Kimberly Safford.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, the content of this unit is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary, used under licence and not subject to any Creative Commons licensing.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following

CCE Logo: http://www.cbse.nic.in/

Puri Boy (a traditional tale) adapted and developed by the RVEC http://www.rishivalley.org/default.html

Extract from: Krishna Kumar (1986) The Child’s Language and The Teacher, A Handbook, United Nations Children’s

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Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.