New Senior English for China, Book 7
Unit 3  Under the Sea    Reading Period
1. Analysis of teaching materials
This text tells stories about a killer whale. A whaler, whose name was Clancy, tells two moving stories about Old Tom, who helped to hunt whales and rescue people.
Status of the material
This is the first period of Unit 3, a new lesson. It’s helpful to enhance the students’ love towards animals and their awareness of protecting animals.
Teaching goals: knowledge goals, ability goals and affective goals.
The knowledge goals: get information about the killer whale, Old Tom.
The ability goals:
1).help the students guess words they don't know from the context
2).enable the students search for specific information and get the general idea of the text
3). Improve the students’ reading abilities and develop students’ ability of expressing their own opinions in English
Affective goals: realize the importance of protecting animals, and properly deal with the relationship between human beings and animals.
Teaching important and difficult points: understand the meaning of a word from the text, grasp and remember the detailed information of the reading material.  Students may have difficulty in understanding the meaning of some words and long sentences from the context.

2.Analysis of the students
Students are at the age of 15 or 16, they are full of curiosity and they are eager to show their abilities. They expect to be accepted by their peers and win other’s praise and love, and they want to succeed in their study.

3. Analysis of teaching methodology: “student-centered” in “new curriculum standard”：
1). Task-based language teaching method: help the students to take part in different tasks
2). Communicative approach: interact with other people and to express their opinions in English
3). Cooperative approach: learn how to cooperate with their partners in a group and improve their ability.

4. Analysis of learning strategies & teaching aids: autonomous learning & cooperative learning strategies, multi-media, textbook, speech cassettes, pictures and videos
 
5. Analysis of teaching procedures: reading-cycle and homework
1). pre-reading:  lead-in,
2). while-reading: fast reading, detailed reading, careful reading
3). after-reading: discussion
4.).homework

5.1. Lead-in
1) discussion with your partners:
1: Do you think whales are fish? Why or why not? If not, then what category do whales belong to? Why?
2: Do you know what animals can help humans in hunting? What can whales do to help human beings?
2) present some pictures and a video about whales
Aims: to activate the students’ background knowledge, to arouse their interest, to prepare for the reading task.
  
killer whales 虎鲸
  
baleen whales须鲸                          white whales 白鲸

5.2.1 While-reading: fast reading:
Ask the students to read quickly to fill in the following form and complete the sentences with proper names:
writer An old man called Clancy
Occupation  A whaler
Time  At the beginning of the 20th century
Place  Australia
All the persons’ names in the text Clancy, Red,  George, Old Tom, James, Jack
1. __ Clancy ____was 16 years of age when he went to work at the whaling station.
2.____ George __ordered Clancy to go to the boat as there was a whale out there in the bay.
3. _ Old Tom __was swimming by the boat showing the whalers the way.
4.__ Jack ___told Clancy that they would return the next day to bring in the body of the whale.
5.__ James __was carried by the waves further and further away from the whalers.
6. __ Red ____knew that Old Tom would protect James.

5.2.2 While-reading: Detailed reading
The students are required to read the text in detail, and then put the following activities in right order:
(    6    ) George started beating the water with his oar.
(    5    ) Clancy jumped into the boat with the whalers.
(    1   ) Clancy arrived at the whaling station.
(    7   ) The killers started racing between our boat and the whale.
(    3   ) Clancy heard a huge noise coming from the bay.
(    2   ) Clancy was sorting out his accommodation.
(    4   ) Clancy ran down to the shore.
(    8    ) The man in the bow of the boat aimed the harpoon at the whale.

5.2.3 While-reading: Careful reading
Then they are required to read the text once more carefully to finish Exercises 1 in P21.
1. What evidence was there that Old Tom was helping the whalers out?
Old Tom let the whalers know that there was a baleen whale nearby; he showed them the way to the whale work as a team.
2. What other animals did the author compare the killer whales with? Dogs.
3. “The killers started racing between our boat and the whale just like a pack of excited dogs.” why do you think the killer whales behave like this?
Because they knew that, together with the whalers, they would soon kill the baleen whale and get a good feed.
4. Why did George think that the killer whales worked as a team?
Because he could see that some of the killers were throwing themselves on top of the whale’s blow hole while others were preventing it from swimming out to sea.
After the careful reading, they are asked to find the main idea and retell the story. First I will ask whether there are some volunteers, if not, I will ask certain students to talk about his main idea.
Main idea: the killer whales can help whalers catch huge whales and even rescue whalers out in dangerous situations.
The exercises in the while-reading part are designed according to the task-based teaching approach.

5.3. Post-reading: pair-work and discussion
Topic: since 1986, most of the countries in the world have banned whale fishing for commercial benefit, but Japan has been fishing whales for sale in the name of scientific research, what is your opinion about this phenomenon? How to protect the endangered whales?

5.4. Homework/ Assignment:
1. Write a short passage about the relationship between human beings and animals for at least 150 words,
2. Read the passage in Workbook P67 and finish the exercises in P68,
3. Review the words and expressions in Reading.

6. Blackboard design: the blackboard design is made so that the students can see it clearly and make it easy to understand the teaching procedures.
Unit 3  Under the Sea    Reading Period
 By Lin Hong
1. Lead-in
2. While-reading: Fast reading, Careful reading
Detailed reading: structure and main idea
3. Assignment
Important words: witness, accommodation, yell, abandon, flee, in the mean time, ahead of, etc

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