Education Ideas
SENSATIONAL BEGINNINGS
Lesson Plans
Table of Contents
- The Clever Compositions Club
- The People Next Door
This teaching idea deals with composition writing in a new and amusing way.
Have you ever thought of the great amount of work marking compositions
involves? Don’t you feel frustrated
when your students read their marks
(and that’s that!) the next day?
Why not give them an insight into the whole process
while catering for
diversity at the same time? Read on!
Students often find it difficult to write compositions; they are
usually afraid of their
teacher’s comments, as they fear low marks coming. The
following suggestions will
contribute to relieve their tension. The
students
are in charge all the time, while
the teacher supervises their work
discreetly and is always available to help when
needed.
Divide the class into groups of 5/6. Distribute these roles according
to the
students´ abilities: writer, proofs reader, language expert and editors
(there should
be at least 2 of the latter.)
Note that different students could play different roles
at different
times.
Alternatively, if you want to keep everybody busy, ask your
students to
write a short composition each and try one (or more) of the other roles
afterwards. Hand out the cards below accordingly:
* WRITER
Write a story on the topic of your choice. Use about 100 words.
Then pass on your work to the proofs reader.
* PROOFS READER
Check your classmate’s composition. Tick (X) a box every time you spot
a mistake.
Then pass this card to the language expert.
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
* LANGUAGE EXPERT
Read your classmate’s work and the proof reader’s card. If you
disagree with the
number of mistakes s/he has found, discuss the matter
with
him/her. Then find the
mistakes and correct the sentences.
Pass the corrected version to the editors.
* EDITORS
You must evaluate (awarding between 1-10 points) your classmate’s
composition.
Be fair! Discuss your marks with your colleague editor/s
and
reach an agreement.
When you are all done, read the composition out and aloud and see how
you
like it.
If the students´ inspiration fails, the teacher should provide a
handful of
topics to write
about. Some authors give you an opening sentence.
Instead, I
am going to give you
some final sentences
to fire the students´ imagination: 'Sorry, darling, I don’t love you
any more.' ; 'When he woke up, he realised he couldn’t move.' And how
do you like
'She felt really proud of herself '? Writing can be fun.
Get
your students started now!
Throughout the years I have collected a good number of brochures and
travel
guides,
which I take to school every now and then for different
purposes.
These materials are
informative and colourful, so the kids enjoy using
them...and they often learn a lot of
interesting things too.
For some strange reason, most people in my country (Spain
hate the
French.
Others look down on the Moroccans and (I keep wondering why)
nobody
seems to
care much about the Portuguese. I do not intend to win the Nobel
Prize
for
Peace or any other International Relations award, but I strongly
believe
that
ignorance is the root of most evils and, in order to fight any
signs of
prejudice and/or
racialism in my students´ minds, I decided to carry
out a
project involving the
geography, the history, the traditions and the
culture
of our neighbours in France,
Morocco and Portugal, with the hope that
my
kids will look at these countries and
their people somehow more
respectfully, so that the situation described above
changes...the
sooner,
the better.
If you feel your students will benefit from reading about your
neighbouring
countries,
you can easily adapt our project to your own interests and
needs.
We used similar strategies when dealing with the different countries.
Find
below some details of our research on France and the French.
We started by choosing a number of interesting topics (art and artists,
business, cuisine,
entertainment, fashion, geography, history,
literature,
famous people, places, politics,
sports and the cinema.
Then, after using various manuals, encyclopaedias and, of
course, the
Internet, we made a list of names under each category, e.g.:
Business: Air France, Bic, Citroën, Dupont, Galleries Lafayette,
Gauloises,
Le Monde,
Michelin, Renault.)
Fashion: Cacharel, Pierre Cardin, Chanel, Dior, Lancôme, Yves St.
Laurent.
Language: ballet, cabaret, café, croissant, hôtel, lingerie, toilette,
vol-au-vent.
The Cinema: Brigitte Bardot, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Juliette Binoche,
Gerard
Depardieu,
The Lumière Brothers, Yves Montand, Jacques Tati.
Afterwards, we looked for information on the selected words and names,
added
pictures where possible...and we eventually made a booklet: "France,
Morocco
and
Portugal from A to Z". It is not available at bookshops but...if
you
take my word for
it... it’s interesting.
E-mail comments about these plans to: joandiez@hotmail.com
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