CEP Lesson Plan Template

Teacher/s: Emily Jones and Matty Espino

Level: A4
Date/Time: Wednesday, 11/5/14
Goal: Practice summarization skills and writing opinions
Objectives (SWBAT):
Students Will Be Able To
1. decipher differences in meaning by listening to different tag questions
2. use tag questions in role play by playing an alibi game
3. summarize a news article they read the day before
4. write opinions agreeing or disagreeing with the judges decision from the news article and
then writing rebuttals
Theme: Arms of the Law
Aim/Skill/Microskill

Activity/Procedure/Stage

Interacti
on

Tag Question
Review:

In pairs, SS will look at 3 tag questions.

SS-SS
Together, they will analyze the meaning behind
the sentences. SS will share answers and T will
go over any discrepancies.
(I dont think this activity was entirely
necessarythe students seemed to
understand meaning of tag sentences but
struggled with form, which we needed to go
over/give more examples with in the future. I
think that this was the issue with most of the
grammar points in general.)

Time

5 min.

Linking & Transitioning to rest of lesson:

Great. Today, we are going to continue talking
about the law in different situations.

Activity 1:
Tag Questions (Pt.
2)

1.1 Pre-Stage:
SS will discuss when, where, and why we use
tag questions. SS will share their ideas.

SS-SS

5 min

(This activity was a

little unnecessary as
students didnt need
much practice with
understanding the
difference in
meanings of tag
sentences. We
ended up taking less
time than was
expected.)

1.2. During Stage:

In groups, SS will discuss the difference
between rising and falling intonation in their
groups. T clarifies if there is any confusion.

SS-SS

15 min

Part 1: In pairs, SS will look at Workbook Pg.

22 A and predict whether the tag is rising or
falling in intonation.
Part 2: SS will check their answers by listening
to the dialogue. T can play up to two times. T
will show answers.
Part 3: T will ask SS to recall the answers they
heard from the beginning of the hour. Focusing
on asking questions in tag format, SS will try to
remember the information they heard.
1.3 Post-Stage:
T will address any question SS have about tag
questions.

5 min
SS-T

Tangible Outcome:
Workbook
Teacher Feedback:
T will provide corrective feedback
Transition #2:
Great! Now, we
can use tag
questions in
situations where
we want to clarify
information. Think
about the podcast
for a minute. What
are some
questions, in tag
form, the police
would ask?

Activity 2:

2.1 Pre-Stage:

T-SS

5 min

Alibi

T will divide SS into groups.

(This is always a
great fluency activity!
The language focus
here was tag
questions, but I
rarely heard police
officers using them
when the questioning
the suspects.
Perhaps next time I
would provide some
sample questions
and ask when a
police officer would
use them so they
could use them more
effectively and
naturally [such as
putting a few
questions on the
bottom of a
worksheet.])

2.2. During Stage:

T will explain alibi game. 1 group will need to
come up with an alibi that matches. Other
groups will play detective and try to match
inaccuracies within the individuals stories.

SS-SS

(Took a
little long
so SS
could
ask each
suspect)

(Next time I would try to get volunteersthis

time we picked the best speakers from each
table [5 altogether], but next time I think I would
ask the students to explain the differences
between a suspect and a police officer and
then ask them to volunteer. Although we didnt
explain the activity in great detail, the students
nevertheless seemed to enjoy the activity and
some really relished the chance to role play.)
2.3 Post-Stage:
SS will decide if the accused are guilty or
innocent. They will explain their reasons why.

20 min

SS-T
5 min

(we spent a short time on this, which was good

because we were running out of time--)
Tangible Outcome:
Notes

Transition to #3:
Excellent job! Now, I Teacher Feedback:
know you did some
Error Correction
reading for
homework. Lets go
ahead and take a
look at that article.

Activity 3: Letter of 3.1 Pre-Stage: Introducing the topic

the Law vs. Spirit of T tells SS to get out their articles and as a
SS-SS
the Law
group they will write a 3 sentence summary (it
doesnt need to be fancy)
(While I had planned
this activity with
(Note: I think we should have explained how to
multiple stages, it
write a summary firststudents seemed
didnt run very
confused about how to write a proper summary,

15 min.

smoothly, though it
was nice to try
something new. I
would definitely try it
again with a few
more changes!)

even though they all understood the article and

the main points. I suppose I had expected them
to be able to summarize and this was incorrect.
It took some groups MUCH longer than others
to finish this section.)
Next, SS should discuss questions they still
have about this article. SS pick 2 questions
they have and write them on their poster.
(Next time I would assign this for homework
and then students would have questions ready
to choose from in their groups and could pick
the best questions and pass them quickly so
the next group would focus on answering.)
SS-SS

25 min.

SS pass their poster to the next group, where

students write answers to the questions and
then pass them back.
(Students seemed to enjoy this partthey liked
writing answers and then seeing responses to
their questions from other groups.)
3.2. During Stage:
SS now write a brief definition of what the spirit
of the law means
SS compare this with the letter of the law
(This part ended up being more teacher
centered than I had wanted, but there were
some EXCELLENT ideas and thoughts given
by students when I elicited definitions from
groups. Again, I think everything was too much
to put all in one activityperhaps if I had
skipped the pre-stage it would have moved
faster? Then we could have focused on this
interesting question and given examples of the
spirit of the law versus the letter of the law,
which was the main point of this reading and
writing activity.)

15 min.
SS-SS

Transition to Wrap
Up: Great job
everyone! Its time
to wrap up for the
day!

SS write a paragraph together giving their

opinion about the question, Do you agree with
the judges ruling? Why or why not?
(We didnt have time for the rest of this activity,
which was the main writing and reading
section! Next time I would definitely skip the
writing a summary and 2 questions part!!)
SS pass their posters to the next group, who
must rebut the first argument.
(Only 2 groups got to this point)

(Again, we ran out of

time to do the poststage, which was
unfortunate. In
addition, some
members of the
groups didnt agree
with each other and
thus had a hard time
writing a paragraph
together giving their
opinion about the
question Do you
agree with the
judges ruling? Why
or why not?
However, I liked how
one group actually
had two
paragraphsone
student wrote he
agreed and another
wrote a
disagreement. I
thought it was a
great solution!
Perhaps next time I
would tell them that
doing that would be

SS pass their posters once more. This group

must rebut the rebuttal.
3.3 Post-Stage:
SS are given their posters and read what the
other students have written. They discuss
whether or not their opinions have changed.
If time, SS write a new law protecting women
on the subway from having upskirt pictures
taken of them.
Tangible Outcome:
Posters with summaries and opinions/rebuttals
Teacher Feedback:
T collects posters for error correction the next
day

a great idea!)

Wrap Up:
Homework

Lesson Plan Evaluation Procedure

Exit Tickets (Socrative)

5 min.

Homework due:
- Workbook pg. 19 #5, pg. 20 #7
Materials
PPTs
Butcher paper and markers
Anticipated Problems & Suggested Solutions:
Ts go over time limit (online timer/ppt timer/timer)
Tech not set up or breaks (print out slides)
Contingency Plans (what you will do if you finish early, etc.):
Have students start on their homework assignments
Brainstorm more cases where they didnt agree with a judgment ruling by a jury or judge in the
US or their home countries.
Post-Lesson Reflections:
All in all this was an enjoyable class. Although it started a bit slow with the tag questions, once
students needed to get up and move for the Alibi game, the energy in the class definitely picked
up. Our class really likes discussion/role play activities like this, and I really hope to do more
activities like this in the future!
Next time I teach this class I would cut the tag question activities (unless my next class has
problems with them) and instead work more with the reading and writing activity. Although I
think activity 3 had a lot of potential, it was definitely too much to do in such a short time.
Because the focus of the activity was actually writing opinion paragraphs, I would next time
scrap the prestage and instead have students start with the during stage defining spirit of the
law vs letter of the law, and have them apply this definition to the article and then write whether
or not they agreed with what the judge had decided on.
Although this class had some problems, I liked how this activity used an authentic text (a CNN
article about upskirting) to then springboard onto for a writing activity. Because we had already
discussed writing thesis statements and talked about good and bad opinion essays, I really think
this would have been a great way to practice writing opinion paragraphs and rebuttals before
actually writing them for the test. Guess well need more practice tomorrow!