Unit 8 When is your birthday?
The First Period
Tao Yuan School by Wang Lijun
I) Status and Function
The topic of this unit is about dates. In this unit, students will learn to ask about when someone’s birthday is. Such topic is closely related to students’ daily life, so it is helpful to raise students’ learning interest, it can also help to improve students’ spoken English. In the first period, students will learn the names of twelve months of a year first, then they can learn to ask when someone’s birthday is, they will be happy to learn such useful expressions. And all the activities I design in this period will help them to practice the target language.
II) Teaching Aims and Demands
1. Language Objectives
Key vocabulary: 12 months, birthday, month,
Ordinal numbers 1st -31st
Target language: When is your birthday?
My birthday is…
2. Ability Objective
Train students’ communicative competence
3. Moral Objectives
Enhance students’ friendship by asking their birthday, and express concern at their friends.
II) Teaching Key Points
The key vocabulary, the expression of the birthday date.
III) Teaching Difficult Points
The difference between cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers.
The use of When-questions.
IV) Teaching Methods
1. Communicative Teaching Methods
2. Task-Based Teaching Methods
3. Pair work
V) Teaching Aids
Video tape, a toy, cards of 12 months, a self-made calendar
VI) Teaching Procedures
Step 1 Warming-up & Leading-in
1. Ask students to count cardinal numbers from the first student to the last student.
2. Show “Lucky” to them, and tell them it’s her birthday today. In this way, I could draw forth the target word “birthday”, to get students’ interest, I prepare to ask students to sing birthday song for Lucky.
Step2 Presentation
1. Guide students to answer how many months there are in a year, and then show them the cards of 12 months.
2. Get students to read after me over and over again until they can read them fluently.
3. Review the ordinal numbers they’ve learned.
4. Show the self-made calendar to students, and then ask them to recite the clever saying about the relations between the cardinal numbers and the ordinal numbers I taught them before.
Step3 Listening and reading practice
Before listening, make sure students can understand the difficult points in the picture, after listening, practice reading the dialogues.
Step4 Writing and speaking practice
1. Ask students to write down their parents’ birthday and their own birthday. Meanwhile, invite two students to write on the blackboard.
2. Teacher and students’ dialogues.
Step5 Pair work
Give students three minutes to prepare for dialogues, and then invite several pairs to the front to perform their conversations.
Step6 Little Teachers’ Time
In this step, I’ll invite some students to be little teachers to ask other students’ questions with using the target language in this lesson.
Step7 Summary
Give a short summary about the important content of this lesson.
Step8 Homework
1. Ask at least five students of their birthday date, and write dialogues on the exercise book.
2. Make a list of the dates of all the festivals you know.
Step9 Blackboard Design
Unit8 When is your birthday?
My birthday is...
12 months
January July
February August
{March September} + Ordinal numbers
April October
May November
June December
Step 10 Teaching Reflection
The topic of this lesson is about birthday, in a whole, I think that students have mastered the target language of this lesson, but after this class, I felt that I didn’t attract the interest in learning English of all the students, because some of the students are not active enough in class. Anyway, I want to say that I am still proud of most of my students; they can follow my steps, and perform quite well. In the process of teaching, I made use of a lot of simple oral English in order to get them know that they are learning English, and try to be used to listening and learning English. I think this is a good way to take the English starters into English learning.