CLASS: 9-B

DATE: 11.03.2015  Wednesday

CONTENT OF THE LESSON: Simple Past Tense

OPENING

The activity the teacher used to start to lesson was watching a student’s 

presentation about his dreams for future. The student, Berk, displayed a power point presentation to the classroom about computer engineering. While presenting, the teacher asked some questions to Berk to make incoherent parts about computer engineering. At the end of the presentation the teacher directed a question which was attracted almost all students: “Berk wants to study as computer engineering. What about you?”

One of the students: I want to study at Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty.

Teacher: Why do you want C.M. Faculty instead of ÇAPA?

Student: I don’t know I just want…

Then teacher continued by saying “Forget about the future now, let’s turn present and open your books! Do you want to learn how to use past simple ha?”

Several activities were used to comprehend the usage of past simple construction.

If I scale the opening activity it can be regarded moderately effective for me. Even if the question was not relevant the content of the lesson nearly all students felt motivated thanks to the question.

SEQUENCING

The lesson contained the following sequence of activities:

-         Making some prediction according to the pictures on the book- English for Life

-         Gap-filling activity

Teacher: What can you see in the picture?

Students: There are women and men. They’re talking.

Teacher: Who are they? What are they talking about?

Students: About “yesterday”.

Then teacher make them turned the activity which indicated some verbs with blue. Teacher asked them to explain why the verbs are blue. Some students answered with their reasons then teacher explain in detail past form of “to be” to make it clear. 

  The purpose of sequencing was trying to make the learners realize the rule of past simple indirectly, to get the goal she started from easy activities to difficult ones.

PACING

After making a comparison between “am, is, are” and “was, were” (am-is-are usage is related to present but if you want to talk about 10 years ago, for instance I have to say: I was a student, but NOW in present I am a teacher.) teacher selected students from the list randomly.

-         Hatice, where are you NOW? (with making stress on the word-now-)

-         I am at school.

-         So, where were you last night?

-         I was at home.

Then she said that she did not want to explain the form, instead of that, “let’s examine the examples.”

“We’re at the theatre last night.”

-         Hande, could you make the sentence negative?

The purpose of pacing the lesson in this way: Consolidation the lesson by giving exercises appropriate for the learners’ level.

CLOSURE

The activity teacher used to end the lesson was focusing on listening and speaking skills.

The teacher asked that if the students had any problem about “was & were” or not. Then she selected a student randomly again:

-         Samet, were you out last weekend?

-         No, I was not.

-         Where were you?

-         At home.

-         Could you make it a long sentence?

-         I was at home.

Teacher asked several questions until being sure of that all students understand the content.

When they wanted to do listening exercise, a technical problem occurred. The teacher had to read the text by herself and the students filled the gaps. Teacher read the sentences in the bubble and stopped when there was an unknown phrase.

The effectiveness of this closure was very effective in terms of that the students had no question on their mind about the lesson. On the other hand if the smart board worked, the listening part could be better for students.