I need some serious lesson planning help. I'm in a certification program and am frustrated at how much is assumed...for one thing, it's assumed that all of us have backgrounds in education and therefore know how to design a lesson plan.
I do not know how to do this.
I'm to design a lesson plan based on a song; the 'class' that I'm designing this for is an upper-intermediate level. The song I've been assigned is A Bridge Over Troubled Waters....so, i was thinking I could focus on metaphors and contractions?
This is supposed to be a lesson that's for an entire class period, 1-2 hours and is therefore supposed to incorporate several mini-lessons within it.
One thing I do know I'll do in a fill-in-the blanks while listening to the song activity.
Other than that, I'm blank. I don't have anything to model this from and I'm stressing out because lesson planning isn't second nature to me like it is for most of the folks in this class. :/
Help, please? I'm so scared that I'm going to fail this class....
Need help creating a lesson - I'm getting my TESOL cert
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Sally Olsen
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Is there any way that you can get the notes and lesson plans of previous students - preferrably one who did well in the course with this professor? Every course has is own requirements and every professor has his/her own pet interests. Have you figured out what your prof values? I am amazed that you were assigned this song and not allowed to develop a lesson from a theme - what are the students learning in the lesson before and after and how does this tie into their learning? Where is it in the curriculum? or the text book?
I would really hesitate to use fill in the blanks unless you know what you are teaching this song for. Then if it is for contractions or whatever, you can make those the blanks. But most students hate this activity. It depends on your group of course, and whether they have done this before.
How about a little pictoral show before you start the lesson with the main ideas of the song pictured in some way - using friends, local sites, and situations and your digital camera? You can play the song in the background as you show the pictures. That will set the scene for the lesson and you can draw the vocabulary from these pictures and put them on the board, write a story with the group and then see how song differs in form and what it emphasizes with the different form, what other vocabulary choices were made and what other grammatical constructions were used. Play the song again.
If you want them to memorize and sing the song, you can cut the lines up and have them arrange them in sequence and ask the why they chose such a sequence, especially if they chose a different sequence than the song which you will play again to see if they got the sequence the same way.
Then they can colour in special grammar features that you want to emphasize and have them subsitute some of their own.
Finally, in small groups they can create their own stories or songs along similar lines with the Bridge Over Trouble Water theme and put these in a binder so that they can read each other's work.
If some groups want to be an air band and sing the song along with the CD, it might be a fun way to end the period or just sing as a group.
I would really hesitate to use fill in the blanks unless you know what you are teaching this song for. Then if it is for contractions or whatever, you can make those the blanks. But most students hate this activity. It depends on your group of course, and whether they have done this before.
How about a little pictoral show before you start the lesson with the main ideas of the song pictured in some way - using friends, local sites, and situations and your digital camera? You can play the song in the background as you show the pictures. That will set the scene for the lesson and you can draw the vocabulary from these pictures and put them on the board, write a story with the group and then see how song differs in form and what it emphasizes with the different form, what other vocabulary choices were made and what other grammatical constructions were used. Play the song again.
If you want them to memorize and sing the song, you can cut the lines up and have them arrange them in sequence and ask the why they chose such a sequence, especially if they chose a different sequence than the song which you will play again to see if they got the sequence the same way.
Then they can colour in special grammar features that you want to emphasize and have them subsitute some of their own.
Finally, in small groups they can create their own stories or songs along similar lines with the Bridge Over Trouble Water theme and put these in a binder so that they can read each other's work.
If some groups want to be an air band and sing the song along with the CD, it might be a fun way to end the period or just sing as a group.