LESSON PLAN (11 E)

Teacher: Istrate Laurențiu Gabriel

School: Colegiul Național ”Ștefan cel Mare”, Hârlău
Date: January 12, 2022
Class: 11th grade (Philology)
Level: B2-C1
Lesson: Narrative tenses – revision
Type of lesson: consolidation of knowledge, developing skills and abilities
Skills: speaking, reading, writing
Teaching aids: passage from a novel, worksheet, blackboard
Time: 50 min
Teaching techniques: conversation, explanation, example, interpretation

Objectives
At the end of the lesson, the students will be able to
 Recognize and identify the types of narrative tenses used in a story
 Use the correct past tense forms of the verbs when telling / writing a story
 Work in groups in order to come up with ideas of storylines using different narrative
tenses

Procedure
Stage 1: Warm-up and introduction (5-7 min)
Teacher reveals the topic of discussion (narrative / past tenses, grammar lesson) and the
purpose of the lesson (Q: What’s the use of getting acquainted with this aspect of English
grammar? A: You can use narrative tenses to tell a story, to talk about a past experience, to
report an event, you can acquire journalistic skills etc.). After students understand the
importance of the topic, teacher tests their prior knowledge related to the subject of discussion
(he asks them a general question about the type of narrative tenses with which they are
familiar and, with their help, lists them on the blackboard).

Stage 2: Acquiring and consolidating knowledge (15-17 min)

Part 1. Reading activity. Considering that it’s a philology class and there is a high possibility
that a lot of students enjoy reading fiction, in order to revisit this grammar issue, the teacher
suggests using a passage from a novel (The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier)
as exercise. The students will have to read the text in pairs, underline the verbs, identify the
structure of every tense listed on the blackboard and interpret each sentence so as to discover
in which situation every past tense is used. On the blackboard, there might be listed the most
common narrative tenses (past simple, past continuous, past perfect, past perfect continuous),
but after reading the text, students can find other structures such as Future in the past, the
modal “would” or the ability in the past.
Part 2. Mapping tenses. Illustrating and summarizing the use of past tenses
At this moment, the blackboard contains all the past tenses explained, exemplified with
passages from the literary text, but in order to get a clearer and more schematic image of
narrative tenses, the teacher might draw an axis on the blackboard which can represent the
way each tense is used in language. This might help students to remember the information
better in the future.

Stage 3. Practice. Developing ideas and improving your imaginative skills (20-25 min)
For the practical part of the lesson, students will work in groups of four or five in order to
come up with writing ideas using different narrative tenses. The teacher comes up with a story
idea, which is a general one: Imagine that you did something bad – it might be murder or a
petty crime – and at a certain moment you arrive home. Somehow, the police found out and
they are on their way to arrest you. Now, the students just have to continue the storyline
started with the sentence: When the police busted the door down… On the one hand, they will
have to think of situations in which they use different narrative tenses (for example, past
continuous – to say what they were doing at that moment; past perfect – to talk about what
they had done prior to the event from the given sentence); on the other hand, they will have to
collaborate, to work together to come up with ideas for a great story that can be turned into a
movie or TV series. Within the groups, they can use brainstorming to generate ideas of plots
and storylines, something that happens in real life too inside a team of writers and producers
who work on a movie or TV series project. During this activity, the teacher acts as a
prompter, trying to provide students with information, encourage them to use their
imagination and work as a team. At the end of the task, the short texts will be read one by one,
while the teacher, together with the others, will check the grammar and comment on the ideas.
Stage 4. The end of the lesson. Homework assignment suggestions. (5 min)
At the end of the class, the teacher might come up with some homework suggestions that can
help students practise grammar in a productive way, such as starting a diary and writing
something in English on a daily basis. He can also encourage students to read fiction and
come in contact with English texts as often as they can in order to improve their skills.

ADDENDUM

Excerpt from The Girl with the Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier:

“My mother did not tell me they were coming. Afterwards she said she did not want me to
appear nervous. I was surprised, for I thought she knew me well. Strangers would think I was
calm. I did not cry as a baby. Only my mother would note the tightness along my jaw, the
widening of my already wide eyes.
I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen when I heard voices outside our front door—a
woman’s, bright as polished brass, and a man’s, low and dark like the wood of the table I was
working on. They were the kind of voices we heard rarely in our house. I could hear rich
carpets in their voices, books and pearls and fur.
I was glad that earlier I had scrubbed the front steps so hard.
[…]
The woman looked as if she had been blown about by the wind, although it was a calm day.
Her cap was askew so that tiny blond curls escaped and hung about her forehead like bees
which she swatted at impatiently several times. Her collar needed straightening and was not as
crisp as it could be. She pushed her gray mantle back from her shoulders, and I saw then that
under her dark blue dress a baby was growing. It would arrive by the year’s end, or before.
[…]
“Well. She’s not very big. Is she strong enough?” As the woman turned to look at the man, a
fold of her mantle caught the handle of the knife I had been using, knocking it off the table so
that it spun across the floor.”