Micro Lesson Plan: English Topic- Active and Passive

Class-VII / VIII Prepared by: Neelu Jawla

Days- 18th October to 22nd October No. of Periods-05/06

Objective:
 To expose them to the correct usage of active/passive.
 To enable them to differentiate active and passive voice.
 To enable them to rewrite the sentence changing the voice from active to passive and vice-
versa.
 To describe scientific activities, report writing and process writing.

Approach: Communicative Language Teaching

Period/Day Topic/Sub-Topics Steps to be taken/Activities

1 Introduction to
passive voice.
Activity-Before coming down to the
topic
The passive is a favorite grammar area
to use for quizzes.
A geography quiz will generate lots of
examples of the present passive, while
the history quiz will generate examples
of the past passive.’
eg:-

1. What country is surrounded

by…?
2. Where is … made?
3. Who was … discovered by?
4. In which country was …
invented?
5. When was … invented?

2 and 3 To change present Various rules for changing from active to

and past simple, passive will be explained
continuous and
perfect tenses into Notes Annexed
 passive.
4 To change future Rules for the same will be explained
simple and perfect with the help of the given annexure.
tenses
5 Extra exercises in the Annexed (AV Room content)
form of fill ups,
process writing and
report writing.
6 Recap and some Annexed
more exercises

What is passive voice?

In English, all sentences are in either "active" or "passive" voice:

Active: Mr. Kumar teaches us English.

Passive: English is taught to us by Mr. Kumar.

In an active sentence, the person or thing responsible for the action in the sentence comes first.
In a passive sentence, the person or thing acted on comes first, and the actor is added at the
end, introduced with the preposition "by." The passive form of the verb is signalled by a form of
"to be".

In a passive sentence, we often omit the actor completely:

When do I use passive voice?

In some sentences, passive voice can be perfectly acceptable. You might use it in the following
cases:

The actor is unknown:

The cave paintings of Lascaux were made in the Upper Old Stone Age. [We don't know who
made them.]

The actor is irrelevant:

An experimental solar power plant will be built in the Australian desert. [We are not interested
in who is building it.]

You want to be vague about who is responsible:

Mistakes were made. [Common in bureaucratic writing!]

You are talking about a general truth:

Rules are made to be broken. [By whomever, whenever.]

You want to emphasize the person or thing acted on. For example, it may be your main topic:

Insulin was first discovered in 1921 by researchers at the University of Toronto. It is still the only
treatment available for diabetes.

You are writing in a scientific genre that traditionally relies on passive voice. Passive voice is
often preferred in lab reports and scientific research papers, most notably in the Materials and
Methods section:

The sodium hydroxide was dissolved in water. This solution was then titrated with hydrochloric
acid.

In these sentences you can count on your reader to know that you are the one who did the
dissolving and the titrating. The passive voice places the emphasis on your experiment rather
than on you.

Note: Over the past several years, there has been a movement within many science disciplines
away from passive voice. Scientists often now prefer active voice in most parts of their
published reports, even occasionally using the subject "we" in the Materials and Methods
section. Check with your instructor or TA whether you can use the first person "I" or "we" in
your lab reports to help avoid the passive.

To learn more about the use of passive voice in the sciences, visit our handout on writing in
the sciences.

Annexure -1

We have listed active and passive forms in the following table.

We used the phrase I drive and have put this phrase into most common tenses.

Active (Simple Forms)

Simple Present I drive

Simple Past I drove
Present Perfect I have driven
Past Perfect I had driven
will-future I will drive
Future Perfect I will have driven
Conditional I I would drive
Conditional II I would have driven

Active (Progressive/Continuous Forms)

Simple Present I am driving

Simple Past I was driving
Present Perfect I have been driving
Past Perfect I had been driving
will-future I will be driving
Future Perfect I will have been driving
Conditional I I would be driving
Conditional II I would have been driving

Passive (Simple Forms)

Simple Present I am driven

Simple Past I was driven
Present Perfect I have been driven
Past Perfect I had been driven
will-future I will be driven
Future Perfect I will have been driven
Conditional I I would be driven
Conditional II I would have been driven

Passive (Progressive/Continuous Forms)

Present I am being driven
Past I was being driven
Present Perfect I have been being driven
Past Perfect I had been being driven
Future I will be being driven
Future Perfect I will have been being driven
Conditional I I would be being driven
Conditional II I would have been being driven

ANNEXURE -2

TYPE – 1 INSTRUCTION BASED QUESTIONS

Read the process carefully and fill in the blanks by changing the voice
1. Take a pan.
2. Pour some water into it.
3. Place the pan on fire.
4. The water boils.
5. Add the specific amount of tea & sugar.
6. The mixture boils again.
7. Pour some milk.
8. Serve the tea hot.

First of all, a pan __________and some water ______ into it. The pan_________ on fire. The water boils.
Then a specific_________________ and ______________. The mixture ___________. Then some milk
___________ .Finally the tea __________ hot.

TYPE – 2 PROCESS WRITING

(BASED ON SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS)
(A) Read the process carefully and then rewrite it by changing the voice.

1. Take one fleshy scale leaf of an onion. Break it into two and pull out a thin membranous peel
using a forecep.
2. Place the peel in a watch glass containing water and cut it into small rectangular pieces.
3. Mix 1 or 2 drops of methylene blue or safranin in a small quantity of water taken in another
watch glass and transfer the peels into it. Leave it for 3 min. Dip the peel in water to remove
excess stain.
4. Take a clean slide with a drop of glycerine in the middle and using a brush transfer the washed
and stained peel on to it.
5. Place a cover slip over it by slowly lowering it with a needle. Avoid entry of air bubbles.
6. Remove excess glycerine from the edges of cover slip with the help of a piece of blotting paper.
7. Observe the slide under the microscope, first in low power and then in high power.
8. Draw a labelled diagram of the cells as seen under microscope.
9. Note the features listed in the observation table.

(B) Read the process carefully and then rewrite it by changing the voice.
Following is the procedure to show that light is essential for photosynthesis.

1. Take a de-starched plant. Using strips of black thick paper clips, cover a part of an intact leaf of
the plant. You may cover several leaves of the same plant.
2. Place the set- up in bright sunlight for about two hours.
3. Take about 150 ml water in a beaker and boil it.
4. Pluck the experimental leaves from the potted plant and remove the black paper strips from
them.
5. Keep the leaves in boiling water till the leaves become soft
6. Stop heating the water.
7. Allow it to cool about 60°C.
8. Transfer the leaves to a boiling tube containing alcohol.
9. Place the boiling tube in the beaker containing hot water.
10. Keep the boiling tube in the beaker till the leaves become colourless.
11. Wash the leaves with water and dip them in iodine solution in Petri dish.
12. After about five minutes, remove the leaves from iodine solution, wash them with water and
observe the colours of the exposed part and unexposed part of the leaf.