Overview
This lesson is designed for a class of upper-intermediate to advanced learners English. This class in mind contains between 14 and 20 students who are all international students at a University in their English language program. The class overall is an integrative skills class that focuses on all four major skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) over the course of the semester with this specific lesson focusing on speaking and listening skills, but integrating some writing skills in too. The students come from a wide range of L1’s so the use of the students native languages by the teacher rarely, if ever, occurs. English is the language spoken for all aspects of the class from instructions to class discussions.
The purpose of this lesson is to introduce students to podcasts and interviews in podcasts. The students need to learn about podcasts because eventually in the course they will be creating a podcast of their own by interviewing and recording a person who is in a field that interests them. This lesson is the second phase of this multiple phase task. The phases in this lesson are based on the phases from Elola and Oskoz (2011). This lesson will expose the students to the type of technology they will be using later on in the course and also provides examples of what they will be doing for their own projects.
This lesson focuses on listening and speaking skills in order to target both fluency and accuracy in student speech. By listening to podcasts the students get a feel for what they will need to sound and act like in their own future podcasts. Additionally, listening helps build their listening comprehension skills of authentic material that is for native speakers. By discussing the podcasts the students are speaking in the class and developing fluency which will help them in their own podcasts when interviewing because they are learning the vocabulary needed for interviews as well as becoming familiar with the words by using them multiple times. Finally, using podcasts and interviews keeps the students interested and motivated because they are able to bring their own interests into the classroom and center their final project around what they would like to know more about. This helps the students to participate more and feel more involved and autonomous in their language learning.
Lesson Plan
Level/Course Name: High-Intermediate ELL’s in a University English Program (15 students from various L1 backgrounds)
Lesson Written by: Haley Winters
Lesson Objectives:
- Students will become familiar with podcasts
- Students will be able to identify podcasts and what makes an interview
- Identify what makes an interview interesting and vocab needed for interviews
This lesson includes (check those that apply):
- Individual work
- Whole class discussion
- Comprehensible input
- Links to past learning
- Listening, speaking, and some writing skills
Pre-lesson Inventory:
- Things to bring to class: List for podcasts, podcast clips needed
- Equipment: Need a computer in the class
- HW to assign: Listen to a podcast on the list on their own time and be ready to discuss next class
3 mins:
- Take roll
- Review class agenda
Warm-up Activity (10 min.):
Teacher and students review interviews from the last class. The question is ‘What makes an interview?’ Class talks about questions, answers, interviewer, interviewee, etc. Teacher reviews the different types of interviews they have seen so far: video interviews, newspaper interviews, radio interviews, news vs. sports vs. celebrity interviews.
Transition: Today we are going to look at a new tool used to give interviews and record them: Podcasts
Pre-listening Activity ( 15 min.):
Teacher gives some information on podcasts and lets the students know that they will be using podcasts in the future for their next project and giving interviews based on their own interests. While listening to the next podcast clips the students need to keep in mind what interests them and how the participants in the podcasts go about asking questions and talking about the information they have received. Next the teacher will go over the vocabulary needed for the students to understand the following podcast clips. The teacher will write the vocabulary on the board and ask the students if they are familiar with any of the words and then together they will all go over the definitions so that the students have time to write them down and can ask for clarification before going on to the clips for the listening activity.
Transition: the teacher explains that now the students are going to listen to the two podcast clips and they need to pay attention in order to use what they learn later in the semester.
Listening Activity ( 15 min.):
Interview with Frank Forencich clip; from 50 interviews podcast (5 min)
Interview with Kathryn Mobley clip; from NPR podcast (5 min)
First clip is about a book and the authors life, second clip is about money and business. The teacher can play these clips from Itunes for the students. Before listening to the clips the students are instructed to take notes on what makes the interview interesting or uninteresting and just what they liked and didn’t like about each of the interviews and why. Once they have listened to the clips the teacher gives them another 5 minutes to finish writing down their thoughts and collecting their notes.
Transition: The teacher now transitions the students to a discussion. She gets them in to small groups (3 people) and tells them that now we will discuss these clips.
Post-Listening Activity ( 20 min):
Once the teacher has split the class into groups of three she instructs them to discuss their notes with each other. See if they have any similar notes. Did the students in their group like the same things, were they interested by the same parts of the clips, if yes/no then why. Once they have had time to discuss their own thoughts in their groups then the teacher will bring the discussion back to the whole class. As a class the teacher will ask what interested them and what they liked. The teacher will write down these things on the board so that everyone can see the list and can think about these things for their future podcasts. This discussion will help them to start to think about their interests and how they will want to set up their own podcasts. It is the transition to the next phase of this semester project and next they will learn how to use the technology needed to create their own podcast.
Homework (5 mins):
For homework the students will be given a list of websites that have podcasts that the students can listen to on their own time. These podcasts all involve interviews and for homework the students need to listen to one or more of these podcasts and be ready to discuss these during the next class.
Back-up activity (variable-time activity):
If there is for some reason extra time then the teacher can have the students start thinking about their own interests and writing down ideas for what kind of topic they would like to do for their own interview. They can share these thoughts with classmates and start seeing who has similar interests so they can pair up later to do their own podcast interview.
Assessment:
Teacher will know if students have understood the activities by their participation in the class discussion and how on task they are during the class period.
Interview Podcast List
BBC The Interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/interview
NPR Music Interviews: http://www.npr.org/sections/music-interviews/
NPR Interviews: http://www.npr.org/sections/interviews/
The Good, the Bad, and the Joblo Movie Podcast: Celebrity Interviews
50 Interviews Podcast: http://authors.podbean.com/
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