Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

Cover Note
The requirements of the assignment This lesson plan unit fulfills the requirements of the assignment firstly by including a specific theme, which is the environmental issues of five countries: Russia, Japan, Mexico, India and South Africa. Secondly, based on this theme, the students develop their skills of presenting their ideas and opinions to the class by means of giving presentations as well as responding to the presentations of the others. Thirdly, our lesson integrates the four skills of reading, speaking, listening, and writing. Students read articles on environmental issues in class as well as outside the class to collect information. Then they will implement their speaking skills to present the information to class in presentations. During the presentation, other students listen and look for the contents that they find interesting or surprising from cultural perspectives. After the lesson, students are asked to write a short reflection paper on what they found from the activity interesting or surprising. Fourthly, through the lesson, students learn to use a grammatical point of present perfect tense. When giving a presentation regarding an environmental issue, students must use present perfect tense to explain any ongoing issues, causes or solutions to resolve the problems. Fifthly, we have incorporated two Kumaradivelu Macrosterategies of raising cultural awareness and integrating the four skills. The former macrostrategy is incorporated throughout the lesson of identifying and finding environmental issues of different countries, students are asked to find cultural factors or anything unique to individual countries in terms of how the problems are tackled or approached. On top of that, they are given an opportunity to think how they may differ from their own countries so that they are able to rethink of the uniqueness or characteristics of their own cultures as well. In terms of the latter macrostrategy to integrate the four skills, as aforementioned in the beginning, students are required to read articles, speak in front of the class in a presentation, listen to the presentations to write down the key elements, and write a reflection on the whole activity as an assignment. Finally, the lesson plan recognizes that students have different learning styles by including different materials to discuss in class and types of activities. The lesson uses video clip as well as articles to facilitate discussions in groups or in class as a whole. In addition, there are tasks which students perform individually as well as in groups. Revision of the lesson plan Based on the feedback from Rie, first we decided to watch a short video clip of environmental issue in the United States instead of showing the movie trailer from which might be too difficult for students to capture the main concept. Watching the short video clip on U.S. environmental problem should be a good introduction of the lesson to discuss environmental issues from cultural perspective. Next, we added the detailed time allocation, which should help teachers or substituting teachers organize the class activities well based on the lesson plan. In addition, as we were advised to develop more detailed explanation for the grammatical point, present perfect tense, we created a handout with the illustration of timeline and sentence examples in which the tense is used as a complementary material to assist students learning. Regarding our incorporated macrosterategy, in order to enforce raising cultural awareness, we added the example discussion questions that will motivate students more to think of the cultural elements within environmental issues.
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Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

Lesson Plan Unit Course description: 4 weeks ESL Summer program in California, the U.S. at a private university Class meets for 2.0 hour a day, twice a week Course goal: To be able to express individual opinions in English in a classroom Student Background: Intermediate level, non-native English speakers A group of 15 students from various countries Ages: 18-21 All students must have the TOEFL score above 75 to be enrolled in this program Terminal Objective: To prepare and give presentations about environmental issues using the four language skills, and enhance understanding of their own culture as well as of the peers through the course of interactions in a group work and the class. Enabling Objectives: Students will be able to collect relevant information from outside resources for presentations Students will be able to read and understand research materials regarding their topic (i.e., newspaper and scientific research articles, online resource, etc) Students will be able to understand the structure of presentation (i.e., introducing the topic, summary of the issue, and solution, etc) Students will be able to involve other students in their presentations and develop an understanding over the topic as a class. Students will be able to appreciate cultural difference and enhance understanding among themselves. Students will be able to state their opinions clearly. Materials: Video clip about environmental problems in the U.S. Handouts A-D (assignment sheet included) Research articles on the environmental issues in five countries Sticky paper Used Kumar strategy: Raising cultural awareness Integrating the four skills

Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

Lesson 1 Time 0~15 (15mins.) Objectives Activity Notes/Materials

Introductio Briefly introduce that in this course students n will focus mainly on improving their speaking skill in terms of presenting and sharing your ideas to the class, giving opinions, etc. Show the video clip regarding an environmental issue in U.S. from National Geographic website (link on the right) to the class. Invite students to discuss the film as a class: Is the issue unique to the U.S.? Or is it something that other countries are facing as well? If so, how do they deal with it? What are the causes of the problems? Any thoughts on solutions? Task 1 Give out a handout A. Have students individually brainstorm on 2 to 3 environmental issues of their own countries. *Make sure that they identify the cause and effect associated with the problems, if they know any. (5 mins.) Put them into groups of five and have them share within the group what they have come up with based on handout A. (10 mins.) Ask groups to choose one or two issues to share with the class. Discuss below questions (15 mins): Do any other countries face the same issue? How do the other countries deal with the issues? Differently or similarly? Any thoughts on solutions? Divide students into presenting groups based on their preference of countries from Mexico, South Africa, Russia, Japan, and India *Make them rock-scissor-paper to even out. (5 mins.) Give each group articles regarding the environmental issues of their selected countries written in English and have them read through. (15 mins.) Have them discuss in groups

Video clip: http://video.nationalgeo graphic.com/video/new s/animals-news/nsf-oilturtles-2011-vin/

10~40 (30 mins.)

Handout A

40~60 (20 mins.)

Task 2

Articles on environmental issues for each country. (Mexico, South Africa, Russia, Japan and India)

Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

What are the environmental problems? What is the cause? What are the ongoing measures to solve the problems in the country? *Remind them that this could be part of their presentations in the next class, but they will do more research outside the class. 60~70 (10 mins.) 70~100 (30 mins.) Break Task 3 Explain the goal of the course to give a presentation by each group to the class using the present perfect tense. Give students a list of present perfect tenses with examples, and go over them with the students. (Handout B) (7 mins) Have volunteers to read out loud the example sentences. (3 mins) Then, have them mark the grammatical points where present perfect tense is used in the articles ~has been~, ~have been~, ~has had~, etc. mins) (5 From each group, ask them to share 2 examples sentences with present perfect tense with the class. (10 mins) Give out handout C. Introduce the format of a presentation and English expressions used in each step. (5 mins) Give students Handout D as an assignment to do some research on the ongoing environmental problems of the selected country. Let the students know that in the next class, they will discuss the topic based on the information they found in individual groups, and put it into a presentation

Handout B

Handout C Distributing Handout D as an assignment.

100~120 (20 mins.)

Closing

Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

Lesson 2 Time 0~5 Objectives Activity Notes/Materials Introduction Give an outline of todays class that first hour will be spent on preparing for presentations in groups, and the second hour will be presentation time from each group. 5~45 Task 1 Students using Give out sticky posters to each group. (40 mins) Have students share their collected information Handout D within their groups Have students summarize their information and Sticky paper write them down on a sticky poster for presentation. The main points should follow Handout D: environmental problems, causes, solutions, and cultural elements, but can be in any format. *Let them know that the presentation time for each group will be 12 minutes, so that the students can limit the amount of information to share with the class. 45~105 Task 2 Presentation time. Each group will have 12 (60 mins) minutes. The first 6 minutes will be spent on presenting and the last 6 minutes will be spent for discussion with the class regarding the topic focusing on the cultural aspect of it. Ask students to take notes regarding any cultural differences between the presented countries and their own nations to discuss at the end of every presentation. During the 6 minutes of discussion, facilitate discussion to foster cultural awareness in students as much as possible referring to the notes the students took. (e.g, What did you find surprising, interesting or unique about their presentations? Why? Can you see any cultural differences?) Quickly point out any good expressions used during the presentations at the end for students to be aware of the learned expressions as well as the use of present perfect tense in the last class. 105~110 Break (5 mins) 110~120 Closing Ask students for overall opinions and comments (10 mins) to the presentation tasks. For homework, students will write a short reflection regarding what they found interesting
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Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

from the presentations.

Handout A

Environmental Issue 1.

Cause

Solution

2.

3.

Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

Handout B

Present Perfect Tense

FORM : [has/have + past participle]
Examples: You have seen that movie many times. Have you seen that movie many times? You have not seen that movie many times.

Unspecified Time Before Now

We use the Present Perfect to say that an action happened at an unspecified time befor e now. The exact time is not important. You CANNOT use the Present Perfect with specific time expressions such as: yesterday, one year ago, last week, when I was a child, when I lived in Japan, at that moment, that day, one day, etc. We CAN use the Present Perfect with unspecific expressions such as: ever, never, once, many times, several times, before, so far, already, yet, etc. Examples: I have seen that movie twenty times. I think I have met him once before. There have been many earthquakes in California. People have traveled to the Moon. People have not traveled to Mars. Have you read the book yet? Nobody has ever climbed that mountain. A: Has there ever been a war in the United States? B: Yes, there has been a war in the United States.

Handout C
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Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

How to Structure a Presentation

Introduction (Outline of the presentation) In the first part, I will look at~ The second part will deal with~ In the final part, I will~. The main body Id like to start now by looking at ~ To begin with, Im going to~ Moving on now to my next point,~ Lets turn now to~ Summarizing Id like to end now by summarizing the main points of my talk. What we have looked at here today is~ Conclusion Id like to end now by thanking you for your attention. Question and discussion If you have any questions, Ill be pleased to answer them now Ill be happy to answer your questions now

Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

Handout D

Environmental Problems

Causes

Solutions

Cultural Elements

Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

Articles for five countries Russia

10

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Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

South Africa

12

Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

13

Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

Japan

14

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16

Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

Mexico

17

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Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

India

20

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Takako Kobayashi and Aiko Nakamura EDUC 8500/ Lesson Plan Unit

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