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| Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash |
Couple finds $1.8 Million Lottery Ticket
In this week's post, I've created a lesson plan and materials based on a short news article from the NPR news website. The objective of the lesson is to encourage students to read authentic English materials, to teach 8 new expressions and to promote speaking and discussion about the topic using the second conditional. In addition, students will need to practise paraphrasing and summarising.
Lesson Plan
The lesson consists of a warm-up exercise and seven tasks. It is designed as a one-on-one lesson for intermediate to upper intermediate level adult students, but could easily be adapted for a group class.
Lesson Objectives:
- To build students' confidence with regards to reading authentic articles.
- To use the fun topic of winning the lottery to encourage speaking and discussion.
- To learn eight new expressions.
- To practise paraphrasing.
- To practise summarising.
- To review the second conditional
Warm Up
Ask the questions, encourage students to talk about their experiences and express their opinion.
Task 1 - Language
Ask the student to read each sentence and try to guess the meaning of the underlined phrasal verb/idiom/phrase in the context of the sentence even though it may be new to them. Then ask them to match the underlined expression with its definition from a-h, assist where necessary.
Task 2 - Reading
Ask the student to read the article aloud to you. Listen carefully while the student is reading and take note of pronunciation/intonation errors. Give feedback and correction at the end of each paragraph. The student may need to re-read the paragraph quietly in order to improve comprehension.
Task 3 - Comprehension
Ask the simple comprehension questions. If the student does not remember the answer, they can look back at the article to find the answer.
Task 4 - Paraphrase
Ask the student to read the extract from the article. Then, get them to underline words in the sentence that could be replaced with a synonym without changing the meaning of the sentence. Get them to write possible synonyms on the line underneath the word they have underlined. They should then try to write a new paraphrased sentence.
Task 5 - Summarise
Ask the student to read the article again. If they are viewing it in the Woodpecker app they can use the dictionary tools to check the definition of any words that they are still not sure of their meaning. Then, ask them to prepare a short summary of the text. If students are not familiar with how to summarise an article, it might be necessary to explain in more detail what this involves. I suggest that the student spend a few minutes writing a brief summary and then read it out loud for correction and feedback.
Grammar Review
Quickly go over the grammar review. Give further examples concerning the hypothetical meaning of the second conditional. Encourage students to give their own examples to check for comprehension.
Task 6 - Speaking
Encourage the student to read and answer the questions using the second conditional, get them to explain why and expand their answers.
Task 7 - Discussion
Encourage the student to give their opinion and discuss the topic. If time, you can prepare a short debate with your student for questions 2 and 3.
Lesson Materials
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| Lesson materials |
Click to view in Google Docs
Click to view the article
Digital Tools
I recommend encouraging students to view the article in the Woodpecker app so they can use the built-in dictionary functions while reading. The free version of the app has 5 English language news websites where the dictionaries work for free, which gives teachers a huge amount of content to choose from when creating lessons or self-study activities.
Free News Sites for English Learners
NPR (National Public Radio): www.npr.org
BBC News (British Broadcasting Corporation): www.bbc.com
CBC/Radio-Canada (The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation): www.cbc.ca/news
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): www.abc.net.au/news/
RNZ (Radio New Zealand): www.radionz.co.nz
NPR (National Public Radio): www.npr.org
BBC News (British Broadcasting Corporation): www.bbc.com
CBC/Radio-Canada (The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation): www.cbc.ca/news
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): www.abc.net.au/news/
RNZ (Radio New Zealand): www.radionz.co.nz
To view the article in the app, touch the main menu bar, then "News Reader" and copy paste the link into the URL bar:
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| https://www.woodpeckerlearning.com/blog/en/help-for-online-teachers/ |
Conclusion
This lesson plan started out as a quick conversation lesson based on a news article. However, it turned into a more structured lesson with a variety of exercises to develop a range of language skills and a grammar review. This is what I enjoy about creating lesson materials for my online students, you start out with a topic and then the lesson grows and develops on its own as you write. I hope that you and your students will find it useful.
Please feel free to comment, I appreciate any feedback. If you are a Google+ member please comment below. If you're on Facebook please message me there and of course, you can always contact me through my website: http://talk2meenglish.wixsite.com/lessons
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