Original Lesson Plan

Title: Celebrations Thanksgiving Day

Grade Level: Grade 5-6 EFL
EFL Level: Intermediate
Duration: Two 60-minute sessions

Objectives:
• Content Objective: To explore the Thanksgiving Day celebrations in Africa, America, Korea, and Mexico
• Learning Objective: To research Thanksgiving Day in each country
• Language Objective: To give a presentation about Thanksgiving Day

NCTE / IRA Standards for the English Language Arts
The Standards
• Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
Equipment Needed: Projector, screen, and computer, pencil, eraser

List of Materials:
E-1 Focus Sheet: Thanksgiving Day Around the World
E-2 Work Sheet: Thanksgiving Day Graphic Organizer
E-3 Work Sheet: Answer in Order
E-4 Summative Assessment: Rubric.

Warm-up:
The teacher will use a projector, screen, and computer to introduce Thanksgiving to the class.
Let’s explore Thanksgiving celebrations around the world! The teacher will click on the links for the students to see a Thanksgiving festival.

http://mytv.tvb.com/news/newsat730/7293/913#page-1

Task Chain 1. Exploring the Thanksgiving Day Celebrations in Africa, America, Korea, and Mexico
1. To understand cultural differences, the teacher gives general information about Thanksgiving. Focus Sheet E-1: Thanksgiving around the World.
2. The teacher pairs the students.
Make groups of 5 students. The teacher assigns each group a different country.
• Group 1: Africa
• Group 2: America
• Group 3: Korea
• Group 4: Mexico
3. With their partner, the students take turns reading
Focus Sheet E-1: Thanksgiving around the World.
Formative assessment: Walk around and help students with reading comprehension. The students shall stay focused on the task, take turns reading, and interpret the meaning of the text.

Task Chain 2. Researching Thanksgiving Day in each country
1. Each group must now find information about the Thanksgiving celebration in the country assigned to their group.
http://www.thanksgiving-day.org/thanksgiving-around-world.html
2. Each group prepares the mind map, to help them organize their ideas for their presentation to the class based on the information they found. The students are not allowed to copy words from the Web site. They must use own words to explain the celebration. E-2 Work Sheet: Thanksgiving Day Graphic Organizer.
3. Each group writes the answers in the order you want to present them to the class. E-3 Work Sheet: Answer Your Reply in Order.
Formative Assessment: The teacher helps the students to find out useful information from the Web site.

Task Chain 3. Giving a presentation about Thanksgiving Day
Each group has five minutes to present the celebration of the country you have.
Formative Assessment: Encourage students to present what they researched.
Summative Assessment: The teacher completes the E-4 Assessment Rubric.

Citation of Sources:
Diaz-Rico, L.T. (2008). Strategies for teaching English language Learners. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
NCTE / IRA Standards for the English Language Arts. Retrieved March 02, 2010 from, http://www.ncte.org/standards
Oberauer, K. (2005, April 07). Oral Presentation. Retrieved from http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=1593465&
Thanksgiving Day. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2010 from http://www.thanksgiving-day.org/thanksgiving-around-world.html
Thanksgiving Festival. (n.d.). Retrieved March 31, 2010 from http://mytv.tvb.com/news/newsat730/7293/913#page-1

E-1 Focus sheet: Thanksgiving Day Around the World


Thanksgiving is essentially a harvest related festival. It celebrates communal harmony. Though it is said to have been originated in America, a number of other countries celebrate harvest related festivals. They are observed with different names and in different seasons.
Harvest related festivals, all the over the world are characterized with lot of fun and merrymaking. Each region has its unique customs and traditions to jubilate the occasion.
Canada celebrates thanksgiving on the second Monday in the month of October. India also has a number of harvest related festivals in different regions. Popular regional festivals are Pongal, Baisakhi, Lohri, Onam etc. Though the underlying principle behind each of them is same, every festival is exclusive and different from the other.
Other Asian countries such as China, Malaysia, Korea celebrate the festival on different dates. Each festival has a folklore attached to it. Harmony, peace, feeling gratitude is the underlying theme of the celebration all over.

E-2, Work Sheet: Thanksgiving Day Graphic Organizer

Yunjoung's blog

We, Koreans study English from Kindergarten but oracy skills are not good considering the duration of studying.
As Yunjoung mentioned, oracy skills are essential if English learners are to participate fully in a democratic society. Speaking involves in number of complex skills and strategies–not only the stringing together of words in proper grammatical sequence but also the organizing the words into coherent, powerful messages that help the speaker attain personal goals. Listening and speaking are integral to communicative competence. This ability begins with oracy training in English-language development.
Even We can write and read, if we can not speak what we want, there can be communicational problems. I agree with Younjoung that it is therefore vital for teachers to help students overcome their oral language quietude.

Ji Young Moon's Blog

I visited Ji Young Moon's blog and her summary regarding the learner autonomy attrated my attention. She mentioned that learner autonomy is the learners’ feeling that studying is taking place due to their own decision. The learner autonomy must be supported in a systematic way by the teacher and curriculum for the learner to benefit. When I was young, there was no Hakwon which is personal institute for helping students who would like to improve their weak subject. However, most of Korean students and parents depend on Hakwon too much and they seem to be unable to study without the help of Hakwon. Also I heard from many teachers in Hakwon that students just follow teacher's instruction lack of self-displine. As Ji Young mentioned, students should develop learner strategies which are systematic plans, designs, procedures, or maneuvers used during learning. I also would like to apply direct strategies such as cognitive, metacognitive, social-affective method to my class.

Chapter 7 Literacy Instruction for English-Language Development

In this chapter, writer is talking about the reading and writing process. Writing is still difficult task for me. As a EFL(English as a Foreign Language) learner, many other people will have same difficulties as me.
When we need to write, it is hard to find out materials what should we write. Therefore, the author says students need a real reason for writing, such as a letter exchange with a pen pal( Diaz-Rico, 2008, p. 193).
The first step of writing process is prewriting. Diaz-Rico (2008) has stated that prewriting helps students not only to build a representation of the topic about which they are writing, but the challenges, prompts, and questions from collaborators also help to fashion a working representation of the assignment or task. The second step of writing is “Drafting” (p. 196). In this step, writers do the best they can in spelling, vocabulary, and syntax, without a concern for accuracy. The drafted writing can be revised by self-correction and revision (p.197). Also students can give one another feedback through formal “sharing” meetings organized by the teacher (p. 197). To make use of distance learning for young adult learners, Janet Raskin developed a noncredit writing course for the commercial website Englishtown.com. I visited this website and found that it is very useful source for speaking as well as writing. I would like to attend seven days free tutorial course.

Chapter Blog for Chapter 6 Oracy Instruction That Builds on the First Language

The title, “ Oracy Instruction that Builds on the First Language” attracted my attention as I am going to take two kids to California this summer (am I too brave? ). This chapter discusses about the oracy processes-how people learn to listen and speak in a second language. It is interesting to know that children learn to engage in higher level thinking by learning first how to communicate (Diaz-Rico, 2008, p. 146). Oracy skills are developed by oracy training.
Listening activities are categorized listening to repeat, listening to understand, and listening for communication. Listening to repeat is learned by audio-lingual teaching, students repeat exactly what they hear. Listening can be taught by the task approach such as assigning students to create listening journal entries, audio taping selections culled from a variety of sources, and listening to the real world. Listening can be combined with other language modes as part of an integrated approach to English-language acquisition. Prelistening tasks are including preview of vocabulary and previewing the rhetorical structure of casual explanation. While listening, students can follow an outline as they listen, take notes cued by a set of questions. Or it will be a helpful strategy for English learners to videotape a lesson while students simply listen to the lecture (Adamson, 1993).
After listening, students can join many kinds of activities such as writing, discussing, reading, drawing or acting out their interpretation of the content(Diaz-Rico, 2008, p. 151).

Chapter Blog for Chapter 5 Learner Strategies and Learner-Focused Teaching

When I read about “metacognitive” teaching method in the book, I felf it is very high level teaching method. Diaz-Rico (2004) says it helps students plan what and how they want to learn; monitor, manage, and motivate while they are learning; and evaluate what they have learned and how they did so. Also she mentioned that metacognition is “the ability to think about your thinking-to make your thinking visible (STEL, 2004, p. 126). Metacognitive strategies are divided into three areas; Planning, monitoring, and evaluating.
Planning strategies help students learn how to organize themselves for a learning task.
For example, if students have group working task due in one week, they decide indivisual role for the first three days, draft and gather their works over the next two days, andn finally proofread their works. Throughout this, students learn how to plan the main comcepts, key ideas, and specific information that must be included (STEL, 2004, P. 127)
Monitoring strategies help students to check their comprehension in listening and reading, and their production while speaking and writing. Students can self-evaluate outcomes to judge how much they have learned, and this self-evaluation can be compared to the teacher’s assessment.
Performance evaluation strategies teach students how to assess their own performance on a task, using learning logs or other reflective tools to keep trck of their progress (STEL, 2004, P. 127).
Another part which attracts my attention mostly is about study skills and time management. Diaz-Rico (2004) says we do not need to “read everything carefully.” The important skill is to know what and what not to read carefully, and to allocate reading time accordingly. This is very important point to know as a English learners.

Chapter Blog for Chapter 4 Performance-Based Learning

Most of teachers who are working for the private institute should focus on students' school grade so it would be hard to apply the knowledge what we learned through MA program.
Two years ago, right after finishing TESOL certificate course, I got a job in elemetary school as a English teacher. There was no designated textbook or curriculum. School asked me to do story related activities. It was good chance to apply what I learned and it was very exciting.
According to my experience, each step of task chain is to be very simple and easy to understand. After detailed explanation about each task, it is important to show demo so that all of the students have clear pictures about each step. For large class, I felt group activities are better than the individual work. Also, competition makes a tremendous difference in child`s ability to concentrate and learn during school hours.
Chapter 4 is very helpful as it explains about the instructional plan, assessment, standards which are essential parts for real class circumstance.