Beginning the CHANGE

This term in my University is almost finished. Some final tests, exams and my students are going to their summer holidays. But I'm not going to relax. I'm ready to begin to implement a technology-related change in my classes. 

Firstly, I need to refine my project plan. I'm still thinking about it and I will share my ideas as soon as they will be in a form of draft project.

Secondly, I need to take into account all the points: resources that I plan to use, rubrics and follow-up activities. 

Thirdly, I have to pass my draft report  by Wednesday week 8, and the final report by noon on Friday week 9.


I started working on it and I'm in the process now.


I'd like to share a lesson plan I've made implementing a technology-related change in my classes.

Environmental Protection Lesson Plan

Students: pre-intermediate level, 15-18-year-olds

Time: 2 sessions (90 min each)

Video: 1,5 min “Give Earth a hand” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep9MFiWXR8M

Values: environmental protection consciousness, responsibility

Objectives: to acquaint students with environmental protection problems and solutions – to make a video project

Building language awareness: challenging vocabulary (Wordle clouds), passive grammar structures, modal verbs in context

Building cultural awareness: these problems are not national but universal and people must unite to solve them

Teacher’s Tips: potential challenges are using topical vocabulary and relevant grammar structures. To overcome this we should use lex-gram schemes or tables

Lesson Sequence

Pre-viewing task:

Ask your students the following questions:

What do you want to be happy?

Can you do without it?

What can’t you do without it?

Viewing:

Show your students 1,5 min Youtube video “Give Earth a hand”

Discussion

After watching discuss these questions with students:

1. What do people really need nowadays?
2. Are all those things friendly to the environment?
3. What are real values for you personally?

Tell students to post the results in twitter and get the feedback

Building the topical vocabulary

1.    Students work in small groups and make Wordle clouds. Think about the following words and expressions to be mentioned:

Air

Pollution

Water

Earth

Rainforest-destruction

Global-warming

Overpopulation

Species-disappearance

Ozon-layer-depletion

Greenhouse-effect

Fresh-air

Purifying-systems

Planting-trees-and-flowers

Food-without-destruction

Being-green

Environmental-protection

Greenpeace

Smog

Nature

Wildlife

Universal-concern

Green-tourism

Recycling

Hazardous-waste

2.    Students divide the vocabulary into groups: environment-friendly and harmful to the nature.

3.    Students state the problem and find the solution to the problem (using the voc).

4.    Group work (3-4 students each)

Using the Internet search (Google, Yandex, Yahoo)  students find articles on the following problems:

-         Air pollution

-         Global warming and climate changes

-         Overpopulation

-         Hazardous waste

-         Water pollution

-         Etc.

Students study the problem and make short presentations in groups.

5.    Using Skype, Twitter, ICQ, etc. students talk to their mates from other countries to find out what types of pollution are the same and peculiar in different countries? How developed countries can help each other to overcome the problems (the USA, China Russia, etc.)?

 6.    Students share the information discussed in their blogs to use in further projects.

 7.    Home assignment: video project promoting ways of solution of the problems presented.