The Big Picture This unit is about bridges, using a text for making and testing model bridges to study procedures. Ask students if they recognise any of the bridges in the photographs. Can you guess which famous bridge is in the background? What other bridges do you know about? How are bridges built? Are all bridges the same design? Why not? What community workers make sure bridges are strong and safe? Build a bridge—is a procedure showing students how to build three bridges and then test the strength of each one. Read the text to the class. Which bridge (pictured 1, 2 or 3) do you think will be strongest? Explain that the text is a procedure: it tells you how to do something. When you glance at this text, how do you know it is a procedure? Discuss other types of procedures, such as experiments, instructions and recipes. Homework emergency!—is an email message from one student to another. Discuss the use of abbreviations (“A” instead of “Aaron”) and shortened sentences (“(I) don’t know where to start.”). How are emails and SMS messages the same? How are they different? What advice would you offer Luo if you were Aaron? What famous bridges can you name? List these and their locations on the board. See research task in Listening, speaking and extension. In the texts—page 34 Review the structure of a procedure (q1–2); see pix. Students can use coloured pencils to circle on p32 each part listed in q1. The subheadings “What you need” and “What to do” (q3) are common alternatives for “Method” and “Tools and Materials”. Discuss other terms, such as “What you do” and “Instructions”. In this unit • Source texts—Contemporary literature (illustrated nonfiction) and an everyday text (email) • Text features—Procedure, labelled photographs, email • Writing—Email to a fictional character and a procedure about how to send an email • On the DVD—Video clips of bridge crossings (2 clips, total 39 sec.); Images of the Tay Bridge, Scotland • Other resources—Craft sticks and wood glue to make bridges; Information about bridges in your local area See Teaching Guide pvii for this unit’s syllabus outcomes. Students organise a competition to make the strongest bridge using craft sticks and wood glue. As a class, they make decisions about the conditions of the competition and how bridges will be judged. Consider imposing limits on the size of the bridges (dimensions or number of sticks used) or the time allowed to build them. Students submit their bridges along with a written procedure of how they built it. Consider inviting other classes to watch the bridges being tested for strength with various loads (carefully supervise this activity). Take photographs as part of a classroom display. Students watch videos of two dangerous bridge crossings: Title Description Duration wooden A woman crosses a wooden bridge over a river in Nepal. 19 sec. waves Cars cross a bridge in Norway. Strong winds drive waves onto the road. 20 sec. Discuss why the crossings are dangerous. Brainstorm on the board what actions would make the crossings safer (eg build wave barriers), and then ask students in small groups to write procedures for the actions. Students research and write a recount (past tense) about a famous bridge. As a basis for a recount, the DVD has before-and-after images of the disastrous collapse of the Tay Bridge in Scotland in 1879. Invite a speaker to talk to the class about memories of a local bridge being built and what life was like before the bridge existed. Students include some or all of these words in their weekly spelling lists: adverb, arch, bridge, build, curve, design, emergency, famous, gradually, scissors, strength, verb. Listening, speaking and extension TARGETING ENGLISH LOWER PRIMARY TEACHING GUIDE Student Book pages 32–39 Unit 4: Which bridge is best? 20 • • • • • • •
Transcript
The Big PictureThis unit is about bridges, using a text for making and testing model bridges to study procedures. Ask students if they recognise any of the bridges in the photographs. Can you guess which famous bridge is in the background? What other bridges do you know about? How are bridges built? Are all bridges the same design? Why not? What community workers make sure bridges are strong and safe?
Build a bridge—is a procedure showing students how to build three bridges and then test the strength of each one. Read the text to the class. Which bridge (pictured 1, 2 or 3) do you think will be strongest? Explain that the text is a procedure: it tells you how to do something. When you glance at this text, how do you know it is a procedure? Discuss other types of procedures, such as experiments, instructions and recipes.
Homework emergency!—is an email message from one student to another. Discuss the use of abbreviations (“A” instead of “Aaron”) and shortened sentences (“(I) don’t know where to start.”). How are emails and SMS messages the same? How are they different? What advice would you offer Luo if you were Aaron? What famous bridges can you name? List these and their locations on the board. See research task in Listening, speaking and extension.
In the texts—page 34Review the structure of a procedure (q1–2); see pix. Students can use coloured pencils to circle on p32 each part listed in q1.
The subheadings “What you need” and “What to do” (q3) are common alternatives for “Method” and “Tools and Materials”. Discuss other terms, such as “What you do” and “Instructions”.
In this unit• Source texts—Contemporary literature
(illustrated nonfiction) and an everyday text (email)
• Text features—Procedure, labelled photographs, email
• Writing—Email to a fictional character and a procedure about how to send an email
• On the DVD—Video clips of bridge crossings (2 clips, total 39 sec.); Images of the Tay Bridge, Scotland
• Other resources—Craft sticks and wood glue to make bridges; Information about bridges in your local area
See Teaching Guide pvii for this unit’s syllabus outcomes.
Students organise a competition to make the strongest bridge using craft sticks and wood glue. As a class, they make decisions about the conditions of the competition and how bridges will be judged. Consider imposing limits on the size of the bridges (dimensions or number of sticks used) or the time allowed to build them. Students submit their bridges along with a written procedure of how they built it. Consider inviting other classes to watch the bridges being tested for strength with various loads (carefully supervise this activity). Take photographs as part of a classroom display.
Students watch videos of two dangerous bridge crossings:
Title Description Duration
wooden A woman crosses a wooden bridge over a river in Nepal. 19 sec.
waves Cars cross a bridge in Norway. Strong winds drive waves onto the road. 20 sec.
Discuss why the crossings are dangerous. Brainstorm on the board what actions would make the crossings safer (eg build wave barriers), and then ask students in small groups to write procedures for the actions.
Students research and write a recount (past tense) about a famous bridge. As a basis for a recount, the DVD has before-and-after images of the disastrous collapse of the Tay Bridge in Scotland in 1879.
Invite a speaker to talk to the class about memories of a local bridge being built and what life was like before the bridge existed.
Students include some or all of these words in their weekly spelling lists: adverb, arch, bridge, build, curve, design, emergency, famous, gradually, scissors, strength, verb.
Listening, speaking and extension
TARGETING ENGLISH LOWER PRIMARY TEACHING GUIDE
Student Book pages 32–39
Unit 4: Which bridge is best?
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Discuss the role of images in procedures (q3). Could you follow the procedure on p32 if you only had pictures? (q3e) Could you follow the procedure if you only had words?
Check that students use straight lines for their labels (q4) and remind them that, regardless of which side of the picture the label is on, their writing must go from left to right.
Read and learn—pages 35–36 Students may draw any bridge that they know about or use (q1b). Discuss the differences between captions and labels.
Ask students to explain their choices of which bridges are strongest and weakest (q2). Project on the whiteboard or print and give to students pp32–33; see the DVD.
After students have identified nouns and adjectives (q3), ask them to look at the words they have not circled or underlined. What type of words are they? (joining words/conjunctions, eg and; verbs, eg to use; adverb, eg as)
Help students to identify that most of the first words in the sentences are verbs (q4); remind them of this when they write their own procedures (p37). Why is it good that instructions often start with verbs? Most sentences in a procedure are commands (q4c).
Your turn—pages 36–37Students could write their email responses (q1) on the computer, then print them out and paste them at the bottom of p36. Encourage students to give good advice. If you needed help, what sort of advice would you want?
Before they write the procedures (p37), help students to send their own emails to friends. Take photos of each step and make a large, labelled flow chart of how to send an email.
Verbs and adverbs—pages 38–39To help students identify verbs (q1–2), encourage students to ask Can I do it?, eg Can I build? Can I Aaron? Note that “fan-fold” is a compound word but still a verb.
Show students how to recognise tense (q3) by writing examples on the board, eg I have eaten. I am eating. I will eat.
Revise adverbs (q4–8); see px. Examples of adverbs that tell when: tomorrow, at lunchtime, after school, next month, in two years, before sunrise, after dinner. Examples of adverbs that tell how: happily, noisily, politely, thoughtfully. Examples of adverbs that tell where: over the hill, in the box, behind the tree, next to the fire, beside the fence.
Explain that some adverbs are built from adjectives by adding ly (q7). Identify the examples in the question as adjectives by asking students to use them in sentences.
Work SheetsWork Sheet 1 asks students to complete a cloze passage using the procedure text from p32. Encourage students to do this, in the first instance, without referring to the text; they can then check their responses. Ask students to cross off each word as they use it, to help them see clearly the remaining words to use.
Work Sheet 2 revises verbs and tense. To help students work out tense, encourage them to ask questions, eg Has it already happened? Is it happening now? Is it going to happen?
Work Sheet 3 asks students to write a procedure from a list of titles. A scaffold helps them to structure their work.
AssessmentWork Sheet 4 assesses students’ knowledge of verbs, tense and adverbs. See Assessment Answers opposite.
To assess Student Book writing and Work Sheet 3, use the procedure rubric (Teaching Guide p90).
1 Teacher to check
2 a I am driving over the bridge.
b I will drive over the bridge.
3 swam, built, fell
4 Teacher to check. See examples under Verbs and adverbs above.
