A Block Lesson Plan That Is Effort Free
There are days when we wish we could go in and be mindless and not worry about anything at all, following a set of automatic steps that still hold our students’ attention for the entire class period.
Below is a 90 minute lesson plan that does that. I use it whenever I want a class to move by fast without me having to actually think. It is, for me, an automatic pilot kind of lesson plan. There are days when I need such plans, to be quite honest.
The goal here is to get the kids’ little pencils moving right away in the creation of a written text. Then, for the remainder of the class, we use that written text to address all four learning modalities in short, roughly ten minute, bursts, including work on grammar.
So how do we start such a class?
Step 1 – (10 min.) Freewrite or Dictation
If it’s a free write, just follow the guidelines for that at benslavic.com/resources/posters/free write rules. If you choose to go with a dictation, just start dictating. I take the most recent story the kids did and make up about a five or six sentence dictation (see dictee discussion at benslavic.com/resources/posters/free write rules). Note that on the dictee I don’t think. Here is an example of a dictation that I made up on the spot once for a level I French class based on the last story we had done:
There is a girl who feels alone. She wants a friend. So, she goes to the circus where she meets a horse who tells her that he would like to be her friend. But the horse finds her ugly.
Step 2 – (10 min.) Grammar
If they did a freewrite, just take one from a student and quickly write it on the whiteboard, verbatim, with mistakes and all. Or use the doc camera or somehow project it. But writing it on the board takes more time and remember this is for those days when you just want to get through the class.
Then, if you wrote in black, correct in red and explain the grammar and such – it’s just a little mini grammar lesson. They think they are learning when they do grammar, although the only real way to acquire alanguage is through CI, not discrete grammar work, although I recall having said that before on this site on one or two occasions. It’s just fun to say it: It’s over for the inordinate focus on grammar in foreign language education.
If you chose to give a dictation, it’s the same thing – just go over the grammatical points that you would like to make. For example, the expression “finds him” in the sample dictee above allowed me to present to my students a nice little lesson on the difference between definite articles and object pronouns. This is pop up grammar, in fact.
Step 3 – (10 min.) Speaking
Doing output in the form of speaking before the (input driven) neurology has been established in the brain doesn’t lead to real acquisition of the language, but it gives the kids the feeling that they are learning, so why not? This is a class for us just to get through, not be the best teacher in the world.
This part of class is done by having the students read and repeat after me to work on accent. Rote repetition, explaining nuances of accent won’t really make their accent any better, at all, because it is a conscious activity and that jams the real accent maker, the deeper mind.
To repeat – language acquisition conscious focus on accent is far less effective – in fact it is ineffective – than constant uninterrupted CI, but it makes them feel like they are learning, and I don’t have to actually think, which is the point here, so why not?
Step 4 – (10 – 20 min.) Comprehensible Input
Now, having given the kids the opportunity to write a little, and having explained some of the grammar, we can do some actual comprehensible input, something of real value. Start by asking basic yes/no questions about the text, going slowly, and using all of your CI skills. Then, move it up a notch and try to personalize the discussion (PQA the text). If, in the text used to start class, a girl has gone to a circus to find a friend but instead finds and falls in love with a clown, ask if that has happened to any of the girls in the room and see where the discussion goes. Better yet, use PSA to create a similar scene to the one you just dictated to them. Instead of a girl, it’s your student Emily who goes to the circus and see what happens with that (see how the questions lead you to a parallel place but not the same one as in the dictee).
Step 5 – (10 min.) Cooperative Learning
Now for a little group work, for any administrators who may believe that the kids can’t learn unless they do some group work each day (there are people who believe that. We can’t call ourselves good teachers unless we get them into groups now, can we, even though none of them knows enough to help the other in the group.
Ask the kids to get into groups of three and tell them to take one of the free writes from earlier that they have between them, or the dictation, and just ask them to write four or five lines to finish the story or extend it further without an ending.
A group may came up with:
So, the horse is very sad. The horse hits her on the head “No!” she says. “Bad horse!” “Excuse me,” says the horse to the girl and he gives her a cake. She eats the cake, and they become good friends.
Step 6-8 (20 min.) Repeat the Process
Now just repeat what you did in steps 2-4 above, but using the newly generated text from Step 5 above. Choosing a text from one of the groups, start as in step 2 with the grammar correction, work on the accent, and do some comprehensible input discussion/PQA around it. Theoretically, this recycling of the newer text through steps 2-4 could lead to another text being added by the groups as per step 5 and you could do this for an entire month.
The reason this works is that the chunks of lesson are short, and, most importantly, come from texts that in some way come from the kids or at some point in the class get personalized. Things that are clear and easily understood by kids, and that are about them, can hold the interest indefinitely. If a seven hour class were attempted using this method, each newly created written section by the groups in step 5 would become more and mory zany, and more and more personalized, and, as the class went on, the interest would increase in a geometric way.
Step 9 (40 minutes or more) – Story
(If there is not time in class, this can be done the next day, and can also be made into an embedded reading in subsequent classes. We may have to actually work a little on this step. But stories are so much fun once we get past the initial fear – you will see. It is like riding a bike.)
In this step, we use the text created in class so far to ask a story. We just follow our new “script”, line by line, asking questions, allowing the new story to form as the class deftly handles the vocabulary because they have been working with it so much before this step of the process.
Conclusions
By allowing the core of the class to form from something that the students have ownership in throughout the class period, the plan above avoids the boredom engendered by overly prescriptive lesson plans.
If we take something, anything, that the kids create and then eventually build a story from it via the above steps, we end up not “teaching something”, but rather “allowing the CI to flow” through (like the Salute to the Sun yoga pose) the series of short roughly ten minute activities described above. Because the material is limited in terms ofvocabulary, we can do a lot of output grammar in the form of writing and speaking, and intersperse it with a lot of input discussion in the form of listening and reading.
If I have been able to describe it correctly, the reader can see that the plan described above is a self-replicating plan, one that theoretically would never stop, but just keep unwinding and expanding. It is precisely this effortless expansion that makes the lesson so effortless.