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| 8/28/2008 |  | |||||
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Silent in the City
This unit should take 2-4 days, depending on time, interest, and extension activities. It is designed for advanced level students age 14 and above. Objectives Students will: Materials to Print
Activities Activity I: Tongue Twisters (10-20 minutes) Begin class by asking what a tongue twister is. Then hand out copies of Printout I, the list of tongue twisters, and read them aloud. Make sure to explain any unfamiliar vocabulary and review the parts of a sentence. You can keep this review general (subject/noun, verb, adjective and adverb) or focus on an aspect of sentence construction that you have been working on. Ask students to practice the first four quietly to themselves. Then break into groups and ask them to read aloud to each other. Encourage silliness. When they get the hang of them, ask them to work as a group to complete the last four and read them aloud to the class. Activity II: Pre-reading (20 minutes) Hand out the vocabulary list and ask them to circle the words they know and, in pairs, discuss the words they don't know. Then go through the list as a class and explain the meaning of each word. Ask the students to think of something they do every day, like taking the bus or brushing teeth or having lunch. Explain the story they are about to read is about an everyday activity. Ask them to guess which one. Activity III: Reading (30 minutes) Hand out copies of Printout III. Ask students to read to themselves or in groups, underlining phrases they do not understand. They can ask their neighbors for help with the passages they have underlined, or you can lead a class question and answer session. Activity IV: Reading Comprehension (10 minutes) Ask your students to get in pairs and answer the true/false questions, correcting the false statements. Then ask them to turn to the neighbor on their other side and check answers. Activity V: titleLooking for Alliteration (10 minutes) Depending on the students' level, you may choose to explain the meaning of alliteration (the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or stressed syllables) or simply focus on repeated sounds. Ask the students if they found any repeated sounds in the reading. If they have not found any, give examples (blinded by the blazing lights of Broadway, a small snake slithered slowly). Ask them to choose a sentence from the text and count the number of times the similar sound appears. Ask them to read their sentences aloud, stressing the repeated sound. Activity VI: Alliteration Game (20 minutes) In pairs, ask students to write their own alliterative sentences. Make sure the sentences are grammatically correct and make some sense (though they can certainly be silly). They can use the tongue twister sheet as a guide or you can provide them with examples on the board. Ask students to write the sentences on the board. The author should then call on people to practice pronouncing the sentence. Activity VII: Grammar (20 minutes) Review the difference between the simple past (I walked), and the continuous past (I was walking). Make sure to explain that the simple past indicates a completed action while the continuous past indicates an ongoing action. Show how the two can be used in one sentence with while, when, or because. This will help them to see that a short action like knocking uses the simple past while a longer action like eating uses the continuous past (When he knocked I was eating dinner). Complete the worksheet in groups, individually, or as a homework exercise. Activity VIII: Dressing up a dull sentence (20 minutes) If you have not done so already, review the functions of adjectives and adverbs, explaining that adverbs are usually formed by adding -ly to an adjective. You can use the vocabulary list to practice the formation of adverbs, asking for the adverbial form of the words in the adjective list and the adjective form of the adverb list. Start the sentence worksheet together, putting the example sentence on the board and working together to form a more interesting sentence. Then ask students to work in groups to take the simple sentences provided and add adjectives and adverbs. Remind the students that nouns can be used as adjectives (desk job, subway station). Turn this into a contest for the most interesting new sentence. Activity IX: Writing Assignment (2-3 days) Ask the students to make a list of things they do every day. Ask them to pick one item on the list and find something interesting or uncommon about it. This can be real or made up, but it should start with something that happens regularly in the student's life and then becomes extraordinary. |