“Take a break.

This is why Jerusalem is the city break you need to

go on this year” – The Sun – A lesson with the use of the
newspaper (PART I)
Student profile (age/level): Third and four grade of secondary school and adults,
intermediate to the upper-intermediate level of English language proficiency

Skills to be emphasized / Language:

 Skills / Language:
 Vocabulary:
o Words from the article, connected with travelling
 Speaking
 Reading comprehension
 Writing

Objectives:

 By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

o Write a short story based on the words provided by the teacher,
o Write their thoughts concerning the most interesting quote from the article,
o Summarise a short paragraph to the partner,
o Talk about some issues concerning travelling and their views upon it.

Materials:

 An online whiteboard,
 Coursebook,
 Computer with the platform to be used,
 The newspaper „The Sun”, with the article,

Duration of the lesson: 2 hours (divided on two lessons per 1 hour each)

Type of the lesson: The lesson was conducted online.

During the online classes, there is a possibility to divide the students into different “online
chat-rooms”. That is why the group work and the pair work could be performed. What is
more, there is an online whiteboard that may be used as a usual blackboard. The recordings
and YouTube videos may be also watched at the same time by all the students or watched by
sharing the screen of the teacher.

The course of the lesson:

The part of the lesson Time Activities

Checking the attendance and short

I. Introduction 5 minutes
introduction to the lesson.

II. During-lesson activities (with

the Pre-reading, While-reading
Pre-reading activity:
and Post-reading activities)
The teacher chooses 6 keywords from the
article and writes them on the board. The
students work in teams of 3-4 to come up
15 minutes
with a short story including these words.
When they have finished, the teacher tells
them about the original article. Then, the
students read aloud their own versions.

While-reading activity:
The students read the article from the
newspaper and while reading it, they
choose the most interesting quote from the
article and write it to the private chat with
15 minutes
the teacher, with the short explanation why
they enjoy the quote. Later on, the teacher
copies the quotes and sends them randomly
to the students who can read their friends'
opinions, views, and discuss them.
20 minutes Post-reading activity:
Students work in pairs and one of them has
to select a short paragraph from the article
and summarise it to a partner, changing
some of the details. The partner needs to

III. The end of the lesson.
try and guess which of the facts are true
and which have been changed.
Homework and an explanation of how to
do it. (The students have to think and write
5 minutes
five things that they would like to visit in
Jerusalem and why.)

My self-observation:
Looking into the TV-series lesson that I conducted previously I thought about conducting a
lesson with the use of newspaper. However, I knew that a one-hour lesson would not be
enough. That is why I decided to conduct a newspaper lesson for two hours. It was much
better. The students could thoroughly read the article and focus on the activities without being
rushed by me when I was looking into the scenario of the lesson. The students could practise
their reading comprehension at their own pace, and I think that they enjoyed it. The pair work
was brilliant. The students, especially adults, like to work in pairs because they feel safer and
they do not have to talk loudly about their thoughts, and they are not afraid of “making a fool
of themselves” in front of the other students. The only problem was when I told the students
to work in groups and write a short story based on the 6 words that I have chosen. Then, of
course, there were some people who were shyer, and they were not that much included in
writing as these who were more confident and they were the definite leaders of the group.
However, I noticed this problem, and later on, during the second part of the lesson, I tried to
avoid it.