CEP Lesson Plan Template

Teacher/s: Matty Espino and Emily Jones

Level: A4
Date/Time: Monday, 11/3/14
Goal: To describe urban legends and raise awareness of participial phrases and tag
questions
Objectives (SWBAT):
Students Will Be Able To
1. Describe qualities that make up urban legends after reconstructing an urban legend and
reading 3 urban legends and one crazy true story
2. Understand the form and meaning of participial phrases after a grammar mini-lesson
following a short summary writing activity
3. understand form of tag questions by completing a workbook activity
4. understand differences in meaning by completing a listening activity
Theme: Arms of the Law
Aim/Skill/Microskill

Activity/Procedure/Stage

Interaction

Time

Preview: Practicing
Error Correction

SS are given errors they made last week (if

finish early, give more mistakes).
Go over answers on board

SS-SS

5
min.

Linking & Transitioning to rest of lesson:

How was everyones Halloween? I hope you
dressed up and enjoyed your time!!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/ruthbaby-ginsburg-officially-wins-halloween

Activity 1: Urban
legends

1.1 Pre-Stage: Putting an urban legend in order

SS are asked about their Halloween
adventures. What was the best costume they
SS-SS
saw? Describe it! (show picture of my favorite
costume--baby Ruth Ginsberg)
SS are then given a story broken up into
separate pieces of paper and are instructed to

5
min.

put it back into order (check answer on doc

cam)

SS-SS

min.

SS-SS

15
min.

SS decide on a definition for urban legends

(CAN SKIP IF NECESSARY)
1.2. During Stage: Urban Legend or True
Story?
T passes out 4 different stories. SS read their
story and then must summarize it to their
group.
T ask students to determine which stories
are true and which are urban legends.
Students discuss their opinions in groups.
How did they make their decision? What
clues did they use?
(Note, one story is truethe one about the cat;
the rest are false)

1.3 Post-Stage:
SS answer follow up processing questions from
the PPT
SS-T

5
min.

Tangible Outcome:
Discussion from reading urban legends

Transition #2: So
when I think of
scary stories, it
Teacher Feedback:
reminds me of my
writes down errors
childhood--like
cartoons! One of
my favorites when I
was younger was
Tom and Jerry.

Activity 2:
Combining
sentences with
participial phrases

2.1 Pre-Stage:
T shows a clip of Tom and Jerry and asks
students to write down the sequence of events
in a short summary (on handout). [5 min]
SS share with each other.

SS; SS-SS

2.2. During Stage: Introducing participial

phrases
T shows example of ways to write the summary T-SS; SS-T

10
min.

(with a lot of participial phrases)

T asks if any of the sentences look different
from the sentences they wrote. Why?
Can you change any of your sentences to
make sentences with participial phrases?
Goes over PPT with more examples of
participial phrases
2.3 Post-Stage:
[IF TIME]
SS complete the exercise on p. 31; check
answers with the class

min.

SS-T

SS-SS

8
min.

3.1 Pre-Stage:
SS-SS
T will distribute question survey. With a partner,
SS will ask the simple questions to each other,
without writing any of the answers down.

5
min.

3.2. During Stage:

T open workbook to pg 20. With a pair, SS will
fill-in the tag questions. If pairs finish early, T
will distribute second sheet.

SS-SS

15
min.

3.3 Post-Stage:
In groups, SS will come up with the rules of tag
question form. T will explain rules if
discrepancy arises.

SS-SS, TSS

5
min.

(if more time, hand out practice 4 from

Academic Writing English p. 257)
Tangible Outcome:
summaries containing participial phrases
Teacher Feedback:
T corrects any errors/ collects short summaries
Transition to #3: I
hope that you all will
try to use these
expressions in your
future writing
endeavors!

Activity 3:
Tag Questions (Pt.
1)

Tangible Outcome:
Tag Question Worksheet
Student Feedback:
SS will correct errors
Transition to #4:
Excellent. Now, I
want to ask you
something. When do
we use tag questions
and why? Discuss
with each other.

Activity 4:
Tag Questions (Pt.
2)

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

SS-SS

5
min.

4.2. 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

20
min

SS-T

5 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. T will
remind SS to use appropriate intonation (rising
if unsure / falling if more certain)

4.3 Post-Stage:
T will address any question SS have about tag
questions.

Tangible Outcome:
Workbook
Teacher Feedback:
T will provide any corrective feedback

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

Wrap Up:
Homework

Lesson Plan Evaluation Procedure

Exit Tickets (Socrative)

5
min.

Homework due:
- Thesis statements part II
- Blog Post 3
Materials
WS
Video clip
Urban legends
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.):
Post-Lesson Reflections:
This class was really fun! It started off with high energy and concluded with students saying that
they really enjoyed the class!
First off, although I like doing error corrections in class, I definitely need to highlight errors and
then have them fix them rather than just giving sentences and expect them to find and fix errors
by themselves. Because of this, the warm up took much longer than I had anticipated/wanted to
spend time on.

The next activity, all about urban legends, was REALLY fun. First, the reconstruction activity
was a hit! Students really like this kind of work, as these kinds of puzzles require students to use
various sentence clues to reconstruct the story; also the story in this case was really ridiculous.
There was a lot of pair negotiation in this activity!
After the urban legend reconstruction, the next part was great because it really integrated
reading and speaking. First, the students first had to read a story and then share it with their
partners, finally deciding whether or not each story was true or an urban legend. When students
learned that the story about the giant cat was real, they got a good laugh from it! We talked
briefly about what kinds of traits urban legends have (its always a friend of a friend or generic
people) to help us be more skeptical of these stories.
The activity introducing participial phrases was GREAT. I cant wait to try this again. The only
problem was that students were unable to take the time to rewrite their sentences using my
model; I wanted them to rewrite and then do some error correction.
Finally, the tag questions activities were good; however, I dont think students need a lot of
practice with the meaning, just more practice with form. Perhaps in the future we could do more
activities practicing form and use as opposed to looking at meaning.