2. Imagine that you have to teach some vocabulary associated with ‘transport’ (e.g. bus, bus stop, ticket, etc) to a group of elementary learners.
How would you teach these words and other ones related to them?
How would you check that the students had understood?
-I will start the lesson by asking these questions;” Where did you go last weekend ?”” How did you go there?”, “ How long did it take ?” “Were there any faster ways to get to this place? “ “ How do you usually come to my class ?””Do you pay money if you take a bus?”In exchange of what is this money ?”Who drives a bus, plane and a ship” ?
”Do you like riding a bike ?” How do you ride it ? .
-I will mention an Arabic movie in which the hero wished to drive a motorbike and ask them about the means of transport that the hero wanted to drive .I can even play the movie and ask them to tell me how did he feel towards his motorbike and ask them about their favourite means of transport.
-Simultaneously ,I will listen to their answers, and make them write all the active vocabulary on the board .I will make sure that the board is divided into three categories -air , land and sea - and that they have written in the correct place .I will leave them guess the correct place themselves at first then I am going to guide them if they were wrong.
- There will be flashcards . I will show them in time, so that they can associate the sound with the picture .
- I will ask them if the spelling was correct , listen to their opinions and make them check the right answers themselves by opening an online dictionary or by watching a video that includes pictures accompanied with text.
-By then I have introduced the topic , vocabulary ;like bus, school bus , car , train , bicycles , pedals, motorbike , ticket , plane , ship , boat ,pilot, bus driver and captain , and stressed the importance of spelling .
- I will move to storytelling . They will sit in circle with me standing in the middle. The following materials will be scattered on the ground beside me : passport , ticket , money , a helmet ,and toys of an ambulance car ,a train , a bus , a taxi , a boy driving a motorbike , a plane , a pilot and a driver and pictures of an airport a train station and a platform .
-I will start telling the story and ask them to pick up the right object whenever I mention it in my story and look down on the ground ..
- This is the story I am going to tell .
Ten years ago , I was in Alexandria spending my weekend. It was 8 pm .My friend called to remind me of my exam the next morning . I couldn’t believe how I had totally forgot about the exam date . I went down to the street ,stopped a taxi and asked him to drive me to the train station. The streets were not moving at all , I knew that it was just an hour for the train to leave .
( What should I do ?)
I decided to walk to the train station. I gave the driver his money and asked him to stop . As I was opening the door to get down , a motorbike hit the door . The boy riding the motorbike was wounded .
It was a mistake to open the door without checking the road , so I had to take him to the hospital . I called and asked for an ambulance car. ( I will hold it myself ,write the spelling on the board and repeat the word many times ).When we arrived ,the doctors told me that he will be fine soon .Thank God he was wearing a helmet that protected his head . ( I will ask one of them to wear the helmet and ask him “ what are you wearing ? who wears it and why ?”)
I went to the boy and told him ,” I am very sorry for not checking the road before opening the door “.Then ,I left quickly to catch my train . Would I be able to make it on time ! I decided to give it a try.
There was a bus stop in front of the hospital . I passed the road . The bus arrived at once. (I will write the underlined words on the board in the appropriate place and quickly explain their meanings ).I got into the bus , bought a ticket from the bus driver and arrived to the train station .
There was no line in front of the ticket window . I got the ticket quickly , but once I arrived at the platform I saw the train leaving and I couldn’t catch it . ( I will write the words “line and platform” on the board under “train”). There wasn’t any other train to Cairo that night.
How could I travel to Cairo now?
I decided to travel by plane . I called a friend of mine who was a pilot. He said that he could help me buy the ticket quickly .I got a taxi to the airport and quickly bought a ticket for the next flight to Cairo. I thought they would need a passport , but it was not needed for any flight inside Egypt .
When I got on the plane I thought that if I had paid attention to my exam date and checked the road before opening the taxi door , I wouldn’t have gone through this bad experience and I would have saved some money.
-I will revise all the discussed vocabulary written on the board and try to get more definitions from the students . I will also stress the usage of some verbs; like “ pass the road” “ get on the train , plane or bus “, “to ride a bicycle or a motorbike “ ,“to drive a car , bus , or a taxi “ and “to check the road” . I won’t say any thing about the word flight at this moment.
-They will have a working sheet that includes the text of the story I narrated followed by these questions :
A-Use some of the bold words in the text to complete these sentences .
1-If you want to catch a train , you go to the nearest ……..
2-After you buy a ticket ,you wait for the train on the ………
3-If the ticket window is crowded , we have to wait in a ……
4-If you ride a motorbike , you must wear a ……………………for protection
5-We must call and ask for ………………………….if anyone was wounded in an accident .
6- If you want to travel by plane ,you have to go to the ……………………...
7-You must buy a …………………… and have a ………………..….if you want to travel by plane outside Egypt .
8- To get a bus , you have to wait at the ………………………
9-You buy a bus ticket from the bus ….……
10 – A journey in a plane is called a …………
11- A …………………………..’s job is to fly planes .
B-Match the pictures with the sentences
They will practise using the previously discussed verbs through matching the sentences with pictures.
They will work in groups for this task .
-The other unpractised vocabulary ( pedals and sea modes of transport has to be in a working sheet for the assignment . The exercise will be mainly pictorial )
- This activity is more suitable for higher elementary grades( 3, 4 and 5 )
- For lower grades miming is better .It will depend on role play in three different scenes to cover the three modes of transport .The active vocabulary will be reduced.
-Under my supervision ,they will work together to write “ school bus , car ,train “ on some papers. I will ask them to stand up in two lines and surround them with papers written on it “school bus “. I will be the bus driver. Some students will have other roles; some will try to stop the bus and get on , others will be cars and others will form a train.
- While driving they will repeat some sentences ; like “ it is a bump lets jump , the bus is moving , the bus stops , someone is getting in . He has to buy a ticket , The bus is waiting for the train to go , the cars are moving quickly”.
-I will help them performing other scenes .
-One of them will be the captain or the pilot . They have to drive. I will create obstacles; like saying “ there is something wrong with you plane , you have to land (go down )what will you do ?” . I will ask others to act frightened .
-To practise spelling, I will make them carry flash cards of letters and then one of students will say a word that we studied today . The right letters have to move quickly to form the correct spelling .
- During all this the words must be written on the board with pictures so that they can recall everything easily .
3. Label the seven underlined words using the correct word class. The first has been done as an example.
My students rightly expect me to research my grammar before I deliver the lesson.
My = adjective rightly =adverb me = indirect object to= preposition research =verb grammar = direct object deliver = verb the =determiner / definite article
