1、Cultural Relics 一、 Teaching Background AnalysisThe reading part of Cultural Relics is the first period of unit1 in module 2, NSEFC.It mainly introduces the anecdote of Russias losing the amber room, an invaluable cultural relic. Students will aware of the significance of protecting historic relics a
2、round the world via reading this story.A freshman in high school has gradually formed the competence of processing information and analyzing problems, therefore in this lesson, I will stress students ability of thinking and expressing in English. For instance, organize them to brainstorm their ideas
3、 in English about the re-building and protection of cultural relics; In addition, this topic is a little bit unfamiliar to students as for their daily life, so I will present several pictures on cultural relics in my teaching process, aiming at eliminating strangeness. According to the teaching of r
4、eading skills required in the English New Curriculum Standard and basing on the features of this passage, I set up the following three objectives:1. Knowledge and skill objectives: 1) Students can sort out the story plot and summarize the main idea of the text; after reading it, 70% of them can rete
5、ll this story fluently with the help of key words . 2) Guess the meaning of all the bold vocabulary, to say amber, jewel and in search of, through context of the text and hints given by the teacher;3) Understand difficult sentences embedding subordinate clauses in the text through group work and tea
6、chers guidance.2. Process and method objectives.1) Enhance students ability in finding key points quickly, analyzing information correctly and generalizing ideas completely via autonomous reading. 2) Promote students comprehensive ability of using language through pair-work and group-work on the top
7、ic of cultural relics. 3. Affect, attitude and values objectives Understand the crucial value of the amber room and other worldwide cultural relics, more importantly, they will have a deeper consciousness of protecting them. Based on the teaching syllabus and take the above analyses on students and
8、objectives into account, I clarify the teaching key points and difficult points as follow:key points:Learning the story of the amber room with reading skills like skimming and scanning. Difficult points: 1) Guessing the meaning of new words through context and understand the attributive clause in th
9、is text；2) Retell the story. 二、Teaching AssessmentIn my teaching process, I will mainly adopt formative assessment, giving timely and effective feedback and evaluation to students performance; I will ensure every student great confidence and sense of achievement in my class. If necessary, I will adj
10、ust my teaching strategy. For example, I will organize role-play and group discussion about the introduction of the amber room and protection of cultural relics in the later part of this lesson, since they involve flexible application and is a little bit difficult, once no pair/group shows satisfyin
11、g performance, I will add appropriate prompts to degrade the difficulty level. I will integrate various assessment methods: self-evaluation, mutual rating and teachers assessment, to motivate students learning activity and create a harmonious class atmosphere. 三、Teaching StrategiesFirstly, deal with
12、 teaching materials flexibly. While preparing this lesson, I considered its warming-up too time-consuming, so I gave it up and design another simpler but more interesting leading in. Besides, since freshmen in high school have certain ability to summarize, I would modify activity two in comprehendin
13、g part: students will summarize the main ideas of each paragraphs freely without any prompts. This lesson, I will mainly adopt task-based teaching method, creating a more open class atmosphere and developing students overall ability. I will adopt PWP model to achieve my teaching objectives, designin
14、g tasks linked with one another, from basic to tougher levels, making sure everyone would gain confidence, for example, I will divide the big task, while-reading, into small ones:questioning, summarizing main ideas, guessing meaning of new vocabulary and analyzing difficult sentences, with increasin
15、g difficulty levels, I will accordingly choose appropriate students to deal with them. For more difficult task, post-reading, I will resort to situation and competition teaching methods, design group activity and advocate experiential learning and participation. This will check students expressing f
16、luency and cultivate cooperative spirit; Besides, as to the situational task and homework, I will add some localized flavor(本土化）. Lastly, I will make use of multimedia to reduce strangeness of todays topic: present some pictures of the worldwide cultural relics, accompanying with English recording ,
17、 and a video showing the formation of ambers; in addition, real objects of amber decoration will also be prepared before the class. 四、Teaching proceduresBearing the above analyses of teaching strategies in mind, I will organize my teaching procedures into the following five links: Leading in, pre-re
18、ading, while-reading, post-reading, summing up and homework. Step1. Leading in Firstly, three pictures representing The Pyramids in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru and The Great Wall of China respectively will be displayed, accompanied by three short introducing recording; after watching and listening,
19、I will raise a question, What do you think of them? Leading them to speak out the phrase cultural relics. Being showed three familiar or unfamiliar pictures, students are expected to dig out their commonalties, thus the topic of unit 1, cultural relics, will be naturally led in. Besides, the recordi
20、ng will give students chance to practice listening and arouse their interest in learning about other cultural relics. Step 2. Pre-readingBefore reading the passage, I will show some real objects of amber decoration, encourage students to discuss and induce the characteristics of ambers. For the ones
21、 who could not express very fluently, I will give some key words as prompts, like color, value, rare and decorate, inspiring them to speak out. Next, a video about the formation of ambers will be played and I will subsequently make a summary in English.Here, visual teaching method help students to h
22、ave a more direct and real observation towards the ambers, laying groundwork for this passage. The video will leave students a more comprehensive impression on ambers. Then students will try to predict the content of the passage freely according to the title in search of the amber room and two illus
23、trations in the text. Whether they are right or not, I will praise them for their imagination. The predicting activity would stimulate students reading interest and activity.Step 3. While-reading Task 1. Fast readingThe title in search of the amber room will naturally stimulate students curiosity: T
24、he thing must have been missing,but why? So they will be required to read the text quickly at the very beginning with the above question in their minds. This task is relatively simple, and most students are expected to locate the answer correctly soon in the last but two paragraph through skimming:
25、It was stolen secretly by some of the Nazis in a war. The solution to a crucial puzzle of this text is conducive to cultivating students ability in finding information quickly through a proper reading skill, and it lays a good foundation for the following reading. Next, skim the passage again, remin
26、d students not to spend too much time on the name, place or new vocabulary, but just suppose they are reading a detective story, concentrating themselves on key sentences marking the event process, based on which they will finish two small tasks aiming at clarifying the main idea of the text:1） Disc
27、uss in pairs and generalize the skeleton of this story, after that, students are expected to come to the following consensus under the teachers guidance: This story mainly introduces the formation,missing and rebuilding history of the amber room.2） Divide the whole class into five groups, and each g
28、roup summarizes the main idea of one paragraph, using not more than three words. After that, compare their key words with task 2 in comprehending part which lists five order-disrupted sentences expressing main ideas of the paragraphs, check whether they find the matched one; lastly, the groups will
29、finish task 2 in comprehending part together. The above two tasks could help train students ability of summarizing and processing information as well as encourage their self-exploring spirit. Task 2. Careful readingThe first step is to remove the reading obstacles coming from the new words/phrases.
30、Scan the whole text and try to guess the meaning of the bold new vocabulary by means of the context or my prompts; I will solve the difficult ones that they put forward,using ways like word-formation, logical relation analysis and similar elements comparing etc. to explain. For example, for the word
31、 “jewel” in “It was also a treasure decorated with gold and jewel,.” , I will give a hint that element before and after the logical word “and” usually have similar characteristics, therefore, “jewel” must be comparable to “gold”, bearing this point in mind, students would no longer be entangled with
32、 this kind of case while reading.This sub-task would realize the second knowledge and skill objective and could train an important reading skill:guessing meaning through context, thus may help them form a good reading habit to go through English passages without turning to a dictionary. Next is to d
33、o intensive reading, students will tick all the figures and their behaviors in this story with red-ink pen, according to which theyll finish task 1 in comprehending part, after that, string the name and behaviors into sentences, to say “The Nazi army stole the Amber Room”. This sub-task would make t
34、he details of the amber rooms history much clearer, therefore deepening their understanding of the whole story.The last sub-task in this step is to analyze the difficult sentences that may confuse students . Since this lesson mainly deals with reading, language points will not be illustrated in deta
35、ils today, just making preparations for the next period. I will select four difficult sentences embedding different kinds of subordinate clauses from the text:1. Frederic William, the king of Prussia could never have imagined that his greatest gift to Russian people would have such a strange history
36、.2. Once it is heated, the amber can be made into any shape.3. This was a time when the two countries were at war.4. There is not doubt that the boxes were then put on a train for Kongsberg.Students are encouraged to translate them and distinguish their structures. They are intended to explain what
37、kind of subordinate clause they include and which are their sentence skeletons through group discussion, which is helpful for their understanding. I will walk around the class to give necessary guidance during the discussion. Lastly, they will make sentences freely, using similar structures to conso
38、lidate what they discovered. Subordinate clauses are students weak points, this design could help them to to remove the most difficult reading obstacles through discovering problems by themselves, thus promote learner-centered-ness in this lesson again. Step 4. Post-readingUp until now, students are
39、 very familiar with the text, so here comes the higher-level tasks in English. The First one is pair-work. Students will make conversations with their own desk-mates. One acts as a visitor and the other a guide. The visitor asks the guide stories about the amber room; they can either play freely or
40、refer to questions I listed on the screen, for example: Why was the Amber Room given this name? What did Catherine II do with the Amber Room?How did you feel when you get to know the fact that the Amber Room was lost?This design helps to check whether students could introduce the story of the amber
41、room by situational teaching method, consolidating what they have learned. The last question is based on their individual perspectives, which could lead them to think deeply about their sense of responsibility in protecting cultural relics. The other task is a group discussion, the 3rd activity in c
42、omprehending part: Students brainstorm the following problems in four groups: Is it worth rebuilding lost cultural relics such as the Amber Room or Yuan Ming Yuan in Beijing? Give your reasons. Each group will select a representative to speak out their ideas, I will dig out their inspiring points an
43、d encourage them. The group task again train their cooperative spirit, thinking ability and expressing capability, whats more, it introduces the protection of Chinese cultural relics, therefore is a good extension activity.Step 5. Sum-upSummarize the key clues of the amber room: three figures, two c
44、ountries and an organization, then invite three to five students to retell the story with the bold words as keys. Lastly I will play the three recording again to finish my lesson, leaving a deeper impression to the students.In retelling, to give key words is to reduce the difficulty level, therefore
45、 takes the majority into consideration, besides, it is a good way to test students memorization and oral English. Combined with the recording, they will further feel the charm of worldwide cultural relics. Step 6. Homework Write a passage about how to protect a famous cultural relic in their hometow
46、n, to say Prince Teng Pavilion; they will share their opinions next class. 五、Teaching Experience The bright spots of this lesson lie in： 1）The active implementation of task-based teaching method: tasks are formed from basic to tougher, linked with each other: firstly read the passage with a question
47、, next summarize the main idea, then remove reading obstacles coming from new vocabulary and difficult sentences, all the above are understanding of pure linguistic level; lastly, through situational teaching and discussion, together with summing up, students could reach a consensuswe need to protec
48、t cultural relics, a deeper understanding level of this text. This teaching pattern are feasible since it stresses learner centered-ness and comprehensive ability; 2）Dealing with the teaching materials flexibly. I gave up the original leading in and adopt a shorter one with pictures and recording wh
49、ich could arouse students interest; besides, I adapted the second activity in comprehending part based on the students situation. 3）Localization. Introduce pictures of domestic cultural relics to compare with the amber rooms. In addition, even the homework is full of Jiang Xi flavor. This could reduce students strangeness towards this topic with their familiar things.
