Below is a 90 minute lesson plan that allows us to go in to our classes and be mindless and not worry about anything at all. It suggests a set of automatic steps that will still hold our students’ attention for the entire class period. 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, segments, including work on grammar. So how do we start such a class?
Step 1 – (10 min.) Free Write 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 – dictation instructions are also on that same link. I may take the most recent story the kids did and make up about a five or six sentence dictation. 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.
You can pull material from a novel the kids are reading as well. Anything can be used for a dictation.
2. 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. Then, if you wrote in black, correct in red and explain the grammar and such – it’s just a little mini grammar lesson – what Meredith Richmond calls “Grammar Hospital”.
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, in the sample dictée above, the difference between definite articles and object pronouns can be explained. How nice!
Step 3 – (10 min.) Speaking
Doing output in the form of speaking before the (input driven) neurology has been established in the brain gives the kids the feeling that they are learning, so why not? Remember, we are just trying to get through the block period on a low energy day.
Just have the students read and repeat after you to work on accent. Rote repetition, explaining nuances of accent won’t really make their accent any better, because, in my view, conscious focus on accent is far less effective than constant uninterrupted CI, but it makes them feel like they are learning, 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. We start by asking basic yes/no questions about the text, going slowly, and using all of our CI skills. Then, we can 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, we can ask if that has happened to any of the girls in the room and see where the discussion goes.
Step 5 – (10 min.) Cooperative Learning
Now for a little group work! We can’t call ourselves good teachers unless we get them into groups now, can we? (There are people who believe that, even though the kids don’t speak the language, not to mention that, the minute that we put them into groups, they start speaking English.)
So create small groups and tell them to either use one of the already started freewrites, or start a new one, and ask them to write four or five lines to finish the story or extend it further without an ending. When asked to extend the story above about the horse, a group 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 use instead the newly generated text from Step 5 above. Choose the work of one of the groups, and just start in as you did in step 2 above with the grammar correction, then work on the accent, and then do some comprehensible input discussion/PQA around the new text. Theoretically, this recycling of the newer text through steps 2-4 could lead to yet another text being added by the groups as per step 5.
This is a self perpetuating lesson plan and theoretically could be done all day. The reason it works is that the chunks of lesson are short, and, most importantly, are generated by students. Things that are clear and easily understood by kids, and that are about them, can hold their interest indefinitely.
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 use now use the text created in class up to this point 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 all period. For details on the process of story creation, see the sample stories in the back of TPRS in a Year! or simply refer to the link on the posters page of this site entitled “Sample Story A”. An embedded reading or a quiz can follow.