Teach English in Baijiazhuang Zhen - Xinzhou Shi

Class level: High Beginner Room: 4 Expected number of students: 14 Time: 90 Language points: Simple Present Tense is the previous knowledge of the learners. Teaching aids: board and pens, projector, pictures, handouts, board game cards. Learner objectives: By the end of this lesson students will be able to: 1. recognize and write verbs using the past tense. 2. Ask and answer about what happened in the past. Personal aims: To improve my teaching technique using different materials. Anticipated problems for students: a-Probably, learners could add past form of the verb while making negative or question with Past Simple. E.g “I didn’t played” instead of “I didn’t play”, or “Did you came yesterday?” instead of “Did you come yesterday?” b- Pronunciation of “-ed”. Solutions: a- Giving them a lot of examples and doing a lot of practice of simple past tense will help them understand that we use past form of the verb only in affirmative sentences. b- Taking them through repeated pronunciation of the 3 different ways of the sound “-ed” until they are able to produce them. Anticipated problems for teachers: The irregular verbs’ past form. Solutions: The teacher must tell students that they have to memorize them because there is no rule for them. Procedure: Phase: Engage Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S 1- Brainstorm: I will show students some pictures of my last weekend in Paris, and I will elicit the context from them. A- look at this picture, who is this? Me, ok good. B- what is this? Plane. C- where is this? Paris. Where is this? Eiffel Tower. D- Where is this? Louvre Museum. E- Where is this? Palace of Versailles. Phase: Engage Timing: 6 Interaction: T-S 2- I will ask the students “what did you do last weekend?” and I will let them thinking and talking freely in English. Phase: Engage Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S 3- I give to each student a handout text of my last holiday which I wrote using past tense, and tell them to read and underline the verbs. Then, I tell them to identify what is almost common to all these verbs. After they said “-ed” I tell them “that’s right: The verbs end with “-ed” are called “regular verbs” and others without “-ed” they are called “irregular verbs”. All of these verbs are in their past forms, and today, we are going to see the “Simple Past Tense”. Phase: Study Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S 4-I write the “Simple Past Tense” on the board and explain when we used it. I start with the “regular verbs”: For the regular verbs we add “-ed” at the end of the verb. For example: play -> played (I played football), clean-> cleaned (she cleaned the house), Visit -> visited (We visited the Louvre Museum), etc. Phase: Study Timing: 9 Interaction: T-S 5- To highlight and drill the target language, I ask them to give me some examples of verbs and I write only regular verbs on the board. I explain that they all end with “-ed” but there is a slightly different pronunciation between them. We pronounce “-ed” like: a- /t/ when the verb ends with voiceless consonant sounds like in: talked, washed, brushed, walked, etc. b- /d/ when the verb ends with vowel sounds or voiced consonant sounds like in: cleaned, saved, played, loved, etc. c- /id/ when the verb ends with /d/ or /t/ like in: needed, hated, started, visited, etc. I draw a table of 3 columns for each category of pronunciation before I explain them. While explaining I read out each verb and write it in its category and tell the students to repeat after me. Phase: Activate Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S 6- To practice more the pronunciation of “-ed” sound: I give students a listening exercise which contains the 3 different ways of the pronunciation of “-ed” sound and tell them to listen and write each verb in its column. Now check with your friend, two, tow, two. Let’s check together. Phase: Study Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S 7- I write on the board some irregular verbs and their past forms (go–>went, do->did, buy->bought, come->came, etc.) I say these verbs are irregular verbs. There is no rule for their past forms, so we have to memorize them. I give each student a printout of some common irregular verbs. 8- Sentence Structure for Past Simple Tense: I say Ok, now let’s see how to make a past tense. Phase: Study Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S a- Affirmative Form: Subject + past form of the verb Example: I played football last weekend. She did her homework yesterday. etc. And ask them to give examples. Phase: Study Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S b- Negative Form: we form the negative sentences with the simple past with the auxiliary(helping) verb did, not, and the simple form of the verb. We do not use “-ed”. Subject + did + not + V Example: I did not play football last weekend. She did not do her homework yesterday, etc. And I ask them to give more examples. Phase: Activate Timing: 7 Interaction: S-S Pair work: I ask them to write my holiday text sentences from positive into negative. Check with the other group. After Let’s check together. Phase: Study Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S c- Interrogative Form: In interrogative sentences (questions), we put the auxiliary verb did before the subject. We do not use “-ed”. Yes/no Questions Did + Subject + V? Example: Did you play football last weekend? Did she do her homework yesterday? etc. And I ask them to give me more questions examples. Phase: Study Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S d- Short Answers to Yes/No Questions: we form short answers with simple past with the subject and the auxiliary verb did. Affirmative Negative Yes, subject +did No, Subject + didn’t Did you play football last weekend? Yes, I did. No, I didn’t. Did she do her homework yesterday? Yes, she did. No, she didn’t. And I ask them more examples. Phase: Study Timing: 4 Interaction: T-S e- Wh-Questions: In wh-questions, we put the wh- word before the auxiliary verb did and the subject. We do not use “-ed”. Wh- word + did + Subject + V? Example: What did you do last weekend? When did I come to Paris? How did she get here? Where did you go last weekend? What time did he go to bed last night? Phase: Activate Timing: 4 Interaction: S-S 9-I group the students in pair and give each pair an exercise to put words in the correct order to make yes/no questions or wh- questions. Phase: Activate Timing: 7 Interaction: S-S 10- Students create Wh-word questions and yes/no questions about their last weekend for a classroom survey and carry out and give feedback to the class. Phase: Activate Timing: 12 Interaction: T-SS 11- Here is an amusing past simple game to help students practice past simple affirmative sentences as well as regular and irregular verbs. In this activity, students play a board game where they make excuses for arriving to class late. The class is divided into groups of four and each group is given a copy of the game board and a set of excuse cards. When a student lands on a square marked ‘Sorry I’m late’, the student picks up an excuse card and changes the sentence in to its past simple form to make an excuse of being late, e.g. ‘Sorry I’m late. I miss the bus’. If the sentence is formed correctly, the student stays on the square. If the sentence is incorrect, the student must move back to their previous square. The first student to arrive at class win the game. Play continues until most or all of the students have arrived at class. 12- Homework: I give students simple past worksheets. Sources:the game “https://www.teach-this.com/grammar-activities-worksheets/past-simple-affirmative-negative"