Teaching Demonstration Filming Project: English reading activities

I always search for ideas and techniques from Task Based Learning and Backward Design when planning my lessons for teaching demonstrations. With a series of reading activities, students actively and collaboratively experienced how their comprehension of the reading passage can be improved by completing the pre, main and post tasks based on TBL.

On top of that, Backward Design focuses beginning with the end, meaning you start lesson planning by determining the desired outcomes first. Following that, you then look for activities to help equip students with what they need to perform the next one. In other words, Because my students have effective scaffolding beforehand, I want them to run out of excuses not to be able to complete the tasks.

Of course, students' mixed abilities have to be taken into consideration as well. We differentiate the learning tasks so that everyone can be engaged. However, I only know two of those "borrowed" students, which make it too difficult within only two days of preparation.

In the face of failure and self-doubt, I even had a nightmare about how I blew it a few days prior to the filming. To my delight, I carefully made a few new attempts for the demos and succeeded.  Also, thanks to Class 912, the way they took part in all activities for two hours in a row helped a great deal.

Lesson Plan

This class is aimed at demonstrating how incorporating reading tasks with Tasked Based Leaning and some Cooperative Learning techniques that can help motivate and engage most of the students in terms of reading comprehension strategies.

I. Pre-Task

Objective 1: With the scrambled text, students are able to put the sentences back in order collaboratively and correctly.

Activity 1: Unscramble it

Assessment 1: Observation

Objective 2: With the sentences squeezed and packed, students are able to use their reading comprehension and read it out loud collaboratively and correctly..

Activity 2: Read it out loud

Assessment 2: Observation

II. Main Task

Objective 3: With a deck of cards of Phrase Match, students are able to match them collaboratively and correctly.

Activity 3: Phrase Match

Assessment 3: Check List & Observation

Objective 4: With the matched cards of the reading passage, students are able to put down all the missing words and make a complete text correctly.

Activity 4: Fill in the blanks

Assesment 4: Check List & Observation

Objective 5: With the complete text, students are able to create a mind map collaboratively to summarize the given reading material.

Activity 5: Mind Mapping

Assessment 5: Rubrics for mind maps

III. Post-Task

Objective 6: With students’ mind maps posted on the wall, the first three and the other three take turns elaborating on their posters and walking around to learn from each other respectively.

Activity 6: Gallery Walk

Assessment 6: Observation, Oral Report Rubrics

IV. Teaching Procedures

1. Greeting, introducing the topic, rewarding system and what we’re going to achieve today (3mins)

2. Unscramble (3mins)

3. Read it out loud (3 mins)

4. Phrase Match (5mins)

5. Fill in the blanks (7mins)

6.Mind Mapping (15mins)

8. Gallery Walk (10 mins)

9. Wrap up (2 mins)