TEACHING PLAN

Weather

Title: Weather & Memory

Language: ESL

Grade(s): High School

Program Type: TESOL

Level: beginner-intermediate
Class Profile: This class is a beginner-intermediate high school class with students from all over the world in it. There are 3 students from Haiti, 2 from South America, 2 from Bosnia, 2 from Iraq, and 1 student from India. This class is filled with students who are new in America and they are having a hard time adjusting to the culture, the language, and new environment. Most of the kids miss their friends and family that they left in their home countries. They feel alienated because they do not speak the language. This lesson plan would be part of a larger project to help the students make connections between their home countries and America.

Contest/Theme: This lesson will introduce the worldwide phenomenon of weather. Students will learn the different types of weather, temperature, and feelings associated with weather. The 4 seasons will be discussed and the different holidays that take place during them will be addressed. The students will be able to give some sort of description of their own experiences with the different seasons and holidays.

Description: This lesson will give some examples of American holidays and give the students a chance to think about their own holidays in their cultures. Hopefully the lesson will give the students an opportunity to get to know each other and the cultures that each of them comes from. If anything, the lesson is geared toward the students interacting with each other. The lesson will show that seasons and holidays are all part of life no matter where you go in the world.

Guided participation: The lesson will be introduced with picture cards of the different kinds of weather (rainy, sunny, snowy, windy, foggy, cloudy). The students will be given different thermometers to look at and there will be a short discussion about different temperatures (hot, cold, cool, warm). The students will be asked to think about how they feel when the temperature outside is hot or cold. Depending on the students, the instructor will introduce the new vocabulary (I am cold, I am hot, etc.) A blow up globe will be tossed from student to student and when the student get the globe they will tell each other about where they come from and what the weather is like and if it is hot or cold in their country. The students will get into groups of two with someone not from their own country. The students will have to discuss the seasons and holidays of their own country and present what they found out to the class.

Extension?: The students will get into groups of two and play memory with the words and pictures for all the new vocabulary—memory is a game where you have two cards that match and they are all face down on the table. You turn over two cards and try to match them.

• If there is time left over the students will give examples of how they talk about the weather in their own language. The teacher will try to find similarities to the English language. The teacher will also try to introduce the vocabulary “How’s the Weather?”

o Homework: to copy a prepared worksheet with a dialogue about what the weather is like and how to ask about the weather. The students should be prepared to do an oral presentation about it the next day.

o Week’s Homework: ask 3 other people from different states what the weather is like in those states.

Targeted Standards:

o 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics.

o 2.1: Students demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied.

o 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language.

o 4.2: Students demonstrate understanding of the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.

What changes could be made to this activity to target different, or additional, standards?

To get the students to read more of the language and not have the lesson so orally based, they could read something about weather and culture in America. This activity could also be stretched into addressing other standards if the students were willing to talk to each other in depth about what the different holidays are in their different cultures. It would be important to discuss the different connections between weather and festivities, with a word of caution about discussing religion.