高中Lesson 3 Memories of Christmas教案

Teaching Content

Unit 3 Celebrations

Lesson 3 Memories of Christmas

A Reading Class

Senior High English Book 1

Published by Beijing Normal University Press

Design Principles

The English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education (2022 Edition) states that students should be able to understand the outstanding cultural achievements of different countries, compare the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign cultures, and develop the ability to communicate across cultures. Students are expected to deepen their understanding and identification with Chinese culture, sort out their international perspectives and strengthen their cultural confidence. In addition, teachers create thematic contexts through perception and attention activities to activate students' existing knowledge and experience and to pave the way for the necessary language and cultural background knowledge. Teachers need to guide students to learn and apply language knowledge and skills through activities such as acquisition and combing, generalization and integration, to acquire thematically relevant cultural knowledge from the discourse, to establish connections between information, to form new knowledge structures, and to perceive and understand the meaning expressed by the language. Teachers also guide students through a variety of meaningful language practice activities such as describing, elaborating, analyzing and applying. Teachers are also expected to grasp the requirements for learning activities that go beyond discourse, such as reasoning and argumentation, judging and evaluating, and imagining and creating. Students are guided to address the values behind the discourse and the attitudes and actions of the author or protagonist. Students will increase their cultural awareness through this lesson, understand cultural connotations in language learning activities, compare cultural similarities and differences, draw on the essence of culture and develop cultural confidence. They will acquire sufficient multicultural awareness, identify with good culture and promote the formation and development of core subject literacy.

Learner Profile

This lesson is intended for senior one students, most of whom are from fifteen to seventeen. They have strong abilities of memorizing, imitating and performing, and they have got the basic abilities of reading. Students have a certain level of vocabulary and grammar, and are capable of acquiring basic information about the text, but their ability to analyze the text in depth is still being established. Based on this analysis. This lesson will help to activate students’ knowledge, scaffold them in three areas: analysis of the stylistic structure of a chapter, language features and the author's purpose, and help them to build confidence, apply language and explore the meaning of a theme.

Content Analysis

[What]

This is a reading lesson from Unit 3 Celebrations on the topic of Christmas memories, which is a People and Society topic. Christmas is a very important holiday in Western culture and learning about it is an important part of students' experience of Western culture. In this article, students learn about the customs of Christmas and the meaning of Christmas through the author's memories of the last Christmas she spent with her grandmother. Grandma arrives on Christmas Eve, unaware that she is ill. The Christmas atmosphere was growing and the author looked forward to Christmas with excitement and cheerfulness, writing letters to Father Christmas, decorating the tree, opening Christmas presents and enjoying Christmas dinner with her grandmother, and having a very happy and memorable time. Although her grandmother passed away a few weeks after Christmas, the author often remembers the happy times she spent with her grandmother.

[Why]

Students are interested in Western culture, but they are not very clear about the specific customs of Christmas and do not know many expressions about Christmas. Through this lesson, students will learn more about the customs of Christmas and how foreigners celebrate Christmas. It helps students to understand more about Western festivals and culture, and to raise their cultural awareness and broaden their horizons. Through reading this heart-warming story, students will appreciate the value of family love that is common to both China and the West.

[How] This article recounts her memories of the last Christmas she spent with her grandmother through a first-person narrative, detailing her experience of celebrating Christmas with her grandmother. The article is long and includes many vivid and imaginative details in a clear chronological order. Through reading the article, students not only learn about Western Christmas customs but also experience a strong sense of kinship and how valuable it is.

Teaching Objectives

By the end of the lesson, the students will be able to:

1. acquire the shared experience of the author and grandmother at Christmas;

2. sort out the sequence of events at Christmas;

3. analyze the details implied in the article that reflect the grandmother's worrying health condition;

4. express own holiday memories and feel the value of family love.

Main Focus

1. grasp the shared experience of the author and grandmother at Christmas;

2. sorting out the sequence of events at Christmas;

Anticipated Learner

Difficulties

1. discover the details implied in the text and appreciate the author's mood based on a deeper understanding of the text;

2. express own holiday memories and feel the value of family love.

Teaching Methods

1. Communicative Approach

2. Task-based Teaching Approach

Teaching Aids

1. Blackboard and pieces of chalk

2. Multimedia equipment

Steps

Teaching Activities

Teaching Purposes

Leading-in (3 minutes)

Step 1

1. Review the Spring Festival (time, weather, food, activities).

The steps could activate students’ schema for celebrating the important festival and attract their attention to Christmas.

Step 2

1. Ask students which festival is important to Westerners, just as the Spring Festival is major to the Chinese.

Matters Requiring Attention

Teachers should guide students in a logical review of the Spring Festival and make an outline to help them sort out what they have learnt previously.

Pre-reading (5 minutes)

Step 3

Discuss the ways for celebrating Christmas: What do people in the West do to celebrate Christmas?

1. Activate students’ existing language knowledge and understanding of Christmas through teacher-student Q&A and student-student discussion. It also serves as a scaffold for later learning by providing students with phrases about Christmas activities.

2. By asking students to predict the content of the article, they will be able to notice that the article is not only about the way Christmas is celebrated but also the emotions of the author and Granny.

Step 4

Predict the text: Ask students to look at the title and the first sentence to predict what the text is probably about.

Matters Requiring Attention

1. The contextual and communicative approach is used here. The teacher needs to show the students graphic pictures based on the situations depicted in the textbook and thus help them to answer how Westerners celebrate Christmas.

2. Before making a prediction, students need to be reminded of the characters mentioned by the author.

While-reading (27 minutes)

Step 5

(4 mins)

1. Underline words about time: The passage is written according to the time order. Would you please underline some words about time?

2. Make timeline of passage.

1. The teacher guides students to focus on the chronological order of the narrative and to determine the order in which things unfold.

2. Sort out what the author and Granny experience together at Christmas time by guiding students to read carefully.

3. By designing fill-in-the-blank and sequencing exercise, students can sort out the author's and Granny's Christmas experiences in different forms and understand how westerners celebrate Christmas in chronological order.

4. By giving students the task of forming groups to discuss and explore further the more detailed and deeper emotional content of the text together. In the process, students are encouraged to read more closely, feel the author's nostalgia for her grandmother, and analyze the meaning of Christmas.

Step 6

(8 mins)

1. Ask students to read carefully and fill in the blanks.

Step 7

(5 mins)

1. Ask students to read the passage again and sequence the activities.

Step 8

(10 mins)

Think and share (group work): ask students several questions.

1. Can you find any hints in the story that suggest Grandma was in poor health condition? Did the writer notice it at that time?

2. Why does the writer think of her Grandma every Christmas? What can you infer after reading the story?

3. Read the last paragraph. Why does the writer think Christmas is “magical”?

Matters Requiring Attention

1. Teachers need to introduce and explain sequencing skills to students, who should mark important events with special marks, look for words and phrases that indicate time and pay attention to time linkers.

2. When organizing group discussions with students, the teacher should act as a guiding direction and need not allow his or her views to influence students' thinking when they are discussing again.

Post-reading (7 minutes)

Step 9

Pair work: Tell your partner about your festival memories. Focus on something special and unique.

After students have learned how Westerners celebrate Christmas and what it means, teachers ask them to organize language to describe their own unique memories of the festival. After students have had some input, teachers need to design output activities to guide students to use the knowledge and skills, methodological strategies, and ideas they have learnt to express their festive memories so that they can transfer and innovate.

Matters Requiring Attention

Before students begin to express themselves, the teacher should demonstrate so that they will have direction.

Summary and Homework (3 minutes)

Summary

Guide the students to summarize the class according to the clues on the blackboard. Summarize the author’s Christmas memories by timeline and the meaning of Christmas.

They intend to promote the internalization and consolidation of the knowledge they have got.

Homework

Ask students retell the story of the author and Granny in no more than 50 words.

Matters Requiring Attention

The summary that you take to the students should be the most important points of the lesson. It is important that teachers make the requirements clear when assigning homework.

Blackboard Design