Aplng 410 – Fall 2013
Lesson Plan _ ESL Tower _ Vowels Discrimination
Candice & Jun
Lesson Title:
ESL Tower
Vowel Discrimination
Class/Student Information:
Elementary school students, intermediate level
Length of Class:
20 minutes
Overall Instructional Goal:
Help students to discriminate similar vowel sounds in both listening and speaking.
Learning Objectives:
➦Improve students’ awareness of similar vowels in English;
➦Help students’ to discriminate similar vowels in sentences through listening;
➦Students will be able to pronounce similar vowels accurately.
Justification for Lesson:
Vowels play an important role in English, and sometimes inability to differentiate the
pronunciation of similar vowels would bring troubles for both listeners and speakers. We hope
this activity would help to raise their awareness of the importance of vowels and improve their
listening & speaking of vowels in words and sentences.
Materials:
ESL Tower website, computer with internet access, round TUITs, candy
The Lesson Plan
Justification for Activities &
Grouping of Students
Orientation (4 mins.)
1. Introduction of ESL Tower
↳ 4 students in a group, 5 groups in
total.
2. Students will be asked to try to practice the
tongue twisters as fast and accurate as possible in
groups and teacher will ask some volunteers to read
in front of the class.
↳ Selected tongue twisters are used to
attract students’ attention and serves as a
warm-up activity to raise their awareness
of similar vowels.
Presentation (5 mins.)
↳ Students are still in the same group.
A vowel chart with vocabularies and pictures will
be shown to students, and then they read after the
↳ A brief review of vowels is necessary
teacher.
for intermediate level students to get
ready for the activity followed.
↳ Words example with pictures attached
helps to reinforce students’ acquisition
and makes the learning process more
interesting.
Engagement (10 mins.)
Game: Where is my chair?
•
•
As a warm up, students will first play this
game together. A target vowel will be given
to students, and they are responsible for
recognizing it in a sentence where there are
similar vowels, and they should clap their
hands as quickly as possible when they hear
it.
↳ Students are still in the same group;
↳ In this activity, students need to pay
full attention to the tiny differences of
those similar vowels through listening
and this will help to raise their awareness
of the importance to pronounce vowels
accurately to prevent misunderstanding.
There are 7 to 8 rounds in this game. In each
round, every group will send a student to
join in the game, and stand up before each
round begins, so totally 5 students will be
playing in each round. A target vowel will
be pronounced and written on board before
each sentence is read, then the teacher will
read the sentence with words containing
similar vowels, students should pay attention
to the target vowel, and sit down as quickly
as possible when they recognize it.
↳ Physical actions are embedded to
attract students’ attention for the entire
lesson. Learning through acting and
competition will increase their
motivation.
•
Students take turns to represent his or her
team to join in the game.
↳ The reward system (round TUIT) is
alluring for most students and it’s helpful
to establish autonomy.
•
The winner of each round can get a point for
his or her team.
•
After finishing each round, students will be
asked to read the target vowels and
sentences in this round together.
•
The group with most points will be the final
winner and get a round TUIT as reward.
Also candy will be the final reward for the
winner group.
↳ Imitate correct pronunciation at the
end will reinforce the correct
pronunciation. We believe these
listening-acting-pronouncing shifts
would make learning more interesting.
Idea borrowed from <150 Ways to
Increase Intrinsic Motivation in the
Classroom> by James P. Raffini
TIPS: In this classroom, every 3 round TUITS
collected can be used to skip an assignment. No
excuses or explanations are necessary when they
hand in tuits.
Turn in extra TUITs at the end of the semester
can earn extra points for final assessment.
Tuits are not tradable and teacher will keep a
record.
Evaluation and Expansion (1 mins.)
Assign students homework to try to make a list of
words that have vowels listed in PPT and bring it to
the class to share with others for next class.
Group 1: /i:/ /i/ /е/ /æ/
Group 2: /‫כ‬/ /‫כ‬:/ /u:/ /u/
Group 3: /ə/ /a/ /∧/ /au/
Group 4: /ei/ /ai/ /‫כ‬i/
↳ Vowels are divided into each group
according to similarity so that students
can practice and reinforce what they
learned after class.
↳ Collaborative work can reduce
workload for students in each group. By
working piece by piece, they can still
gain a lot through sharing.
↳ Sharing with peers is a good way for
learners to get some new and creative
ideas.
A little change about content:
After the real mini teaching class, we got the response from our teacher and peers that the
sentences in game are a little hard for elementary students, and even not easy for them as
university students to recognize the target vowel, because the sentences are too long, and include
too many similar vowels. So changing sentences into vocabularies will be a good choice. In each
round, reading students four or five vocabularies, which contain similar vowels, will make the
game easier.