A PIONEER FOR ALL PEOPLE

西安高新第一中学   李倩南

Section I Analysis of the teaching material

The content of my lesson is taken from New Senior English for China Students’ Book 4, Unit 2 Working the Land. As an expansion of the topic of this unit, the reading passage A Pioneer for All People is about an agricultural pioneer named Yuan Longping who worked hard to produce a new strain of rice from the some area of land. The emphasis of this period is the reading skills such as skimming the passage for the main ideas and scanning for the specific information. Therefore, this lesson is in an important position in this unit.

Section II: Analysis of students’ need

     For students in senior high school, they have the basic ability to read and collect information. In this period, students are still encouraged to develop their reading skills and to comprehend as many details as possible.

Section III Teaching objects

1.     Knowledge and ability objects

(1)  To enable students to have a better understanding of what Dr. Yuan Longping has done for all people;

(2)  To improve students’ reading skills and the ability to summarize the main idea and extract the specific information;

(3)  To develop students’ integrated skills through reading and speaking;

2. Emotional objects

     To understand the idea that great personality is of importance to one’s success.

Section IV Important and difficult points

1.     Comprehending the reading material;

2.     Analyzing the structure of the passage and summarizing the main idea;

3.     Extracting the specific information;

4.     Developing students’ reading skills.

Teaching Procedure

Step 1 Lead-in

     Invite students to watch a short video “A Bite of China” and lead in the topic of food. And then share some figures and graphs to show that we are facing the serious problem: large population V.S. limited arable land. At last, raise the question “Is it possible to feed so many people with limited farmland? ” and naturally lead students to know more about Yuan Longping.

Purpose: To lead in the topic of this period.

Step 2 Skimming for general idea

     Skim the passage and try to answer:

1.     What’s the main idea of the whole passage?

2.     What’s the main idea of each paragraph?

     In this part, some basic reading skills will be involved. First, students are encouraged to observe the title and the illustration in the passage to predict what will be introduced in the passage. Then, skim the whole passage to confirm their idea.

Before skimming the four passages one by one to conclude the main idea of each paragraph, teach students some reading techniques to help them have a better understanding. For example, remind students to pay special attention to the data and time; underline some key words; try to find out the topic sentence; and the most repeated word may be the topic of this paragraph.

Purpose: To let students summarize the general idea of the whole passage and each paragraph.

Step 3 Scanning for the specific idea

     Ask students to read each paragraph again in different ways and try to extract some specific information. Meanwhile, use some pictures to attract students’ attention and help them to understand and remember the details of the passage. During this part, some practice will help students to better understand the content, such as filling in the blanks and answering questions.

Purpose: To practice students’ ability to extract specific information.

Step 4 Thinking and discussion

     Although Yuan Longping has increased the output of rice, it doesn’t mean that we can waste food in our daily life. Encourage students to think about what we can do to support “Eat-it-up Campaign” and what we can learn from Yuan Longping.

Purpose: To encourage students to use the facts they have learned in the passage to support their idea and to learn from the personality of Yuan Longping.

Step 5 Homework assignment

     Writing: What is your dream?

            How will you realize your dream?

Purpose: As homework is a necessary part to strengthen what students have learned in class, this task is for them to understand further about the topic of this unit.

Section V Teaching evaluation and reflection before teaching

     While students are reading and discussing, I will walk around the classroom, keeping an eye on every student, praising their excellent performances. Besides, self-examination and self-esteem will help men to improve the teaching quality and the teacher-student relationship.

     Anyhow, this is just the teaching plan. In the actual process of teaching, I will adjust my teaching procedure if necessary.