LESSON PLAN

Table Tennis Rules

A. FACTUAL INFORMATION

• My name: Hui Ling Yang

• Day, date, and time of lesson: Monday, March 16, 2015, 10:00-11:15

• Grade and level of students: secondary 2, Special Education program

• Brief description of students: students of a adapt group, intermediate level, well-disciplined,

coming from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

B. OBJECTIVES AND PROBLEMS

• Topic area/theme: sports and rules

• General aim: The goal of the lesson is to create opportunities for students to practice

English in a meaningful way through oral interaction, reading and viewing activities. It also

aims to enrich students’ knowledge of sports by introducing to them a sport that they are not

familiar.

• Specific objective(s): By the end of this lesson, the learners will be able to say the names of

some Olympic games. They will also be able to understand and talk about the basic rules of

playing table tennis. Moreover, they will be able to discuss the rules of the sports they play.

• Evaluation criteria: Competency 1 Interact orally will be evaluated. The teacher will be

moving around in the classroom to evaluate students during their discussion time. Since

students have been learning modal verbs for a while, the teacher will pay special attention to

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students’ use of modal verbs. She will consider all four aspects of C1 evaluation which are

participation, pertinence, fluency and accuracy.

• Related content/essential knowledge:

– Functions: identification, interests, instructions

– Grammar/structure: the Modals (can, cannot, must, mustn’t, should, shouldn’t, )

– Vocabulary: sports, table tennis,

– Anticipated language: This is … That is…

I do/go/play + (sports).

You can(not)/ should (not)/ must…

• Anticipated problems and solutions: Students may go back to L1 when doing the crossword

puzzle. The teacher will remind them to speak English. Students may have difficulty

understanding some vocabulary of table tennis. The teacher will offer visual support.

Students may also have difficulty with answering the reading comprehension questions. The

teacher will provide them with explanation.

C. COMPETENCIES COVERED

• ESL-specific:

Competency #1: Interacts orally in English. Students discuss in pairs or groups and using

planning skills to complete the task.

- Key Features: engages in oral interaction, constructs meaning of the message, expands a

personal language repertoire, uses functional language

Competency #2: Reinvests understanding of texts

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- Key Features: reads and views texts, uses prior knowledge, constructs meaning of texts,

cooperates, carries out a reinvestment task

• Cross-Curricular: Competency #7 – Achieve his or her potential

Competency #8 – Cooperates with others.

Competency #9 – Communicates appropriately

D. MATERIALS AND AIDS

• Multimedia: Smartboard, computer, the Internet,

• Handouts: the sports crosswords puzzle (Appendix 1),

the table tennis vocabulary worksheet (Appendix 2),

the reading activity worksheet – Table Tennis Rules (Appendix 3),

the viewing activity worksheet – True or False Questions(Appendix 4),

the Rules of Your Favorite Sport worksheet(Appendix 5).

the Exit Slip (Appendix 6)

E. STRUCTURE OF THE LESSON

ActivityAnd

TimingWhat does the teacher do?

What do the students do?

Rationale

HOOK

15

minutes

1. The teacher asks the students

about how they spend their spare

time. She asks questions like

“Do you play basketball/ do

yoga/ go swimming? What

sport/activity are you good at?”

2. The teacher introduces the The students work in

To activate

students’ prior

knowledge about

sports.

To arouse the

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crossword puzzle about sports.

She invites the students to take

the challenge to complete the

puzzle in less than 10 minutes.

She checks the solution to the

puzzle with the whole class.

pairs to do the crossword

puzzle.

students’ interest in

learning and their

fighting spirit to

work positively.

To expand

students’ language

repertoire.

DEVELOP-MENT

10Minutes

1. The teacher introduces the sport

of table tennis by asking the

students to guess what sport she

is good at. She plays the video

clip for the students:

Top 10 craziest Table Tennis

Shot in 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch

?v=VF2MhlA9FMg

She uses the video clip to teach

the vocabulary (racket, paddle,

bat, referee, assistant, umpire,

table tennis, ping-pong ball, net,

court).

She asks the students to read the

The students watch the

video.

The students work on the

vocabulary handout: find

the right word from the

word bank for each

number.

The students work

To prepare the

students for the

reading activity.

To develop the

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20minutes

10Minutes

15minutes

text Table Tennis Rules,

highlight the modal verbs in the

text and then answer the reading

comprehension questions.

She checks the answers with the

whole class.

2. The teacher asks the students to

do the True or False questions

about table tennis rules before

watching the video.

She plays the video for the

students : Table tennis basic

service rules

http://

www.allabouttabletennis.com/

rules-of-table-tennis.html

She asks the students to do the

True or False questions again.

3. The teacher asks the students to

discuss and write the rules of

their favorite sports.

She evaluates C1. She elicits the

evaluation criteria from students.

individually for the

reading activity.

Students do the True or

False questions

individually.

The students work in

groups of 3 to discuss

the rules of their favorite

sports.

students’ reading

skills.

To encourage

students to be a

courageous

language learner

who is willing to

take risks.

To allow the

students to reinvest

their understanding

of sport rules and

use modal verbs.

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CLOSURE

5

minutes

1. The teacher wraps up the class

by asking the students why are

rules needed in sports.

2. She asks the students to

complete the Exit Slip which

requires students to write three

rules of playing table tennis.

The students complete

the Exit Slip before

leaving the class.

To emphasize the

importance of sport

rules.

To allow students

to reflect on what

they have learned

and develop their

ability to monitor

their own learning

process.

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Appendix 1

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Appendix 2

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Appendix 3

Name_____________________________________Group_______Date______________

Table Tennis Rules

The rules of table tennis have been changed many times in recent years in relation to the service law, but for a casual game of table tennis it remains very simple.

Start a game

Before you start a game, you'll need to decide who's going to serve first. If you're just playing a game with friends, you can use whatever method you like to decide this, but the official rules of table tennis say that it's decided by lot, usually by tossing a coin or disc having two distinct sides.

However, a common method used at lower levels of play is for one player (or the umpire) to hide the ball in one hand, then put both hands under the table or behind his or her back, and then ask the opponent to guess which hand the ball is in. Although the winner of this often serves first, he does actually have three choices. The winner can elect to serve first or make his opponent serve first or decide which end of the table he prefers to play at first.

Basic Rules

When you serve the ball, the ball must rest on an open hand palm. Then it must be tossed up at least 6 inches. The ball must above the level of the playing surface and behind the server's end line. As the ball is falling, you must hit it with your racket held in your playing hand so that it bounces once on your side of the table, and at least once on your opponent's side of the table. If you allow the ball to bounce more than once on your side of the table, you lose the point.

The ball may bounce anywhere on both sides of the table and, unlike tennis, you don't have to serve to one part of the table - unless you're playing doubles. If the ball touches the net and still bounces on your opponent's side of the table, the service must be replayed. However, if the ball touches the net and does not bounce on your opponent's side of the table, you lose the point.

Equipment

The paddle should have a red and a black side. The ball should be either orange or white and 40 mm in size. Players should wear dark clothing as a contrast against the white and orange balls. The table should be 2.74 meters long, 1.525 meters wide and 0.76 meters high. Players cannot use the table for support or balance. If the player’s free hand touches the table or the net or if the player moves the table, the player loses that point.

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Scoring

A match shall consist of the best 3 of 5 games (or 4/7 or 5/9). During a game, each player gets to

serve for two points in a row, and then the other player has to serve. For each game, the first

player to reach 11 points wins that game, however a game must be won by at least a two point

lead. 

Answer the following questions about the text.

1. What is the common method used to decide who should serve the ball first in a game of table tennis?

2. What can cause a player to lose a point? (3 examples)

3. How many games should a player win in order to win a match?

4. If a player wins a game with a point of 13, what is the point for his / her opponent?

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Appendix 4

Name_____________________________________Group_______Date______________

Viewing activity: Table Tennis Basic Service Rules

Decide True or False for the following statements.

1. When you serve the ball, you mustn’t hide it. T / F T / F

2. You can throw the ball upwards, backwards or to the sides. T / F T / F

3. When serving the ball, you must strike the ball when it is dropping. T / F T / F

4. The ball should hit your side of the table and then go over the net.T / F T / F

5. You can have another serve if you miss the ball.T / F T / F

View the video and decide True or False for the statements above again.

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Appendix 5

Name__________________________________Group______Date____________

Write the rules of the sport you are good at with modal verbs.

_____________________________ Rules

1._________________________________________________________

2._________________________________________________________

3._________________________________________________________

4._________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

5._________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

6._________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

7._________________________________________________________

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Appendix 6

Exit Slip

Give me 3 rules of playing table tennis.

Exit Slip

Give me 3 rules of playing table tennis.

Exit Slip

Give me 3 rules of playing table tennis.

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Reflection on the Lesson Table Tennis Rules

Lesson description

The topic of this lesson was sports and rules. This lesson aimed to achieve three goals: 1) The

students would be able to name some Olympic games. 2) The students would be able to

understand and have conversations about the rules of table tennis. 3) The students would be able

to use modal verbs to discuss the rules of the sports they play. This lesson was given to a group

of students of special education. All the goals were met at the end of the class.

What did I do that worked well?

I managed to engage the students by choosing topics that are relevant to them. We were

doing a unit about extreme sports which seemed interesting in the textbook. But, I found out

that most students had no personal experience of extreme sports so that there was not much

that they could do with this unit. So, I decided to switch to teach normal sports that students

play regularly. This shift connected the students’ lives to language learning and thus enabled

them to express their ideas in the target language more easily. When I asked the students the

questions like “How do you spend your spare time?”, “How often do you go swimming?”,

“How do you find about playing soccer?”, and “What are the rules of the sport you play?”,

they all had something to say. The relevant topics raised the level of students’ engagement

greatly. Relevance is the key to meaningful learning.

I maintained the students’ interest through a variety of activities during the course of the

lesson. The beginning hook activity was a crossword puzzle about the Olympic Games. I

invited the students to take the challenge to complete the puzzle in less than 5 minutes which

was the time I used. This invitation motivated the whole class to participate in the activity.

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To introduce the learning content of this lesson - table tennis rules, I showed the students a

video clip of 10 craziest Table Tennis Shots. The video clip caught all students’ attention

because they were amazed by the high performance of the table tennis players in the video.

The video aroused the students’ interest to want to learn more about table tennis. Towards

the end, I carried out another activity to ask the students to use modal verbs to write and

speak about the sports they play. Since I knew several students in this group play sports for

the school teams and they had just won some matches, I complimented their sports skills and

called them the experts of their sports. This act boosted the students’ sense of pride, and they

became more interested in the activity.

I provided plenty of comprehensible input before pushing the students to produce output. I

used the video clip mentioned above to teach vocabulary and then asked students to match

the vocabulary with the right pictures of table tennis. The reading of Table Tennis Rules

increased the students’ understanding of the learning content by requiring them to answer the

comprehension questions with their own words instead of copying exact sentences from the

texts. The viewing activity of How to Serve the Ball, in which the students needed to decide

if the statements about table tennis were true or false, deepened their learning of the use of

modal verbs. When the students were finally asked to write and speak about the rules of the

sports they play, they already received a lot of input they needed to produce something in the

target language.

What do I still need to work on?

I need to work on how to model activities rather than simply explaining activities. I was

focusing on practising giving clear and succinct instructions when giving students work to

do. I found out that oral instructions were not enough for some students in this group (This is

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a special education group). For example, when I asked the students to do the crossword

puzzle of the Olympic Games, I assumed that the students all knew how to do it, so I only

explained what they needed to do. I should have done one example with the whole class and

written the word in the puzzle which was shown on the Smart-board. Some students were

confused by the viewing activity How to Serve the Ball. I asked the students to decide twice

if the statements were true or false, once before viewing the video to encourage them to take

risks when learning the target language and the second time after viewing. Despite my

explanation, they still didn’t understand why there were two T / Fs at the end of each

statement. I should have modeled how to do the true or false questions.

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