Lesson Plan of Applying Intensive Reading Strategies in English

 

Lesson Plan of Applying Intensive Reading Strategies

Subject English

Grade VI, VII

Students` learning Outcomes

•       Applies critical thinking to interact with text using intensive reading strategies (while reading) to:

a)      Guess meanings of difficult words from context.

b)    Use context to infer missing words.

Information for teachers

• Intensive reading requires students to read the text carefully to understand its meaning and context.
• Critical thinking is a process of analyzing information when thinking to find out deeper meaning of concepts, questions and assumptions. it is a way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true or false.
• To ‘infer’ means to understand or get the meaning when there are no direct or obvious clues (guesses) in the text. Inference requires looking at context (background, setting, information, and topic) of the text.
• Missing words can be guessed using the information already given and by looking at the meaning of the other words in the same sentence and the rest of the text.
• Students must be guided by the teachers to understand the context and meaning of difficult words when reading the text. Teacher must be questions about the text to develop interest in the students and help them think critically.
• While teaching the lesson, the teacher should also consult textbook at all steps wherein and whenever applicable.

Material / Resources

Writing board, chalk/marker, duster, textbook

Introduction

• Ask the students the meaning of the world overcast.
• If they are unable to answer tell them not to be disappointed. They can always guess the meaning of a world in a sentence without a dictionary.
• Write the following text on the board: (Assad could hear thunder. He looked up and saw that the sky was overcast. He rushed to pick up the clothes that he had put out to dry after washing)
• Now ask them to guess the meaning of the word overcast again (meaning: cloudy, about to rain)
• Ask them which words/information helped them to guess the meaning. (correct responses will depend on the following clues: thunder/rushed to pick up the clothes that he had put out to dry after washing.)
• Tell the students that they will be guessing the meanings of difficult words by keeping in mind the context of the text, next day.

Development

Activity 1

• Take relatively short but difficult text from the textbook which has some difficult words in it.
• Make small groups of 4-5 members each.
• Ask the students to read in groups and underline difficult words (or words that are new for them).
• Now ask the students to guess the meaning of the words, if no one is able to answer, point out the clues in the context and ask the class to guess the meaning by keeping in mind the same.
• Do this activity for all the underlined words.
• Appreciate the students who guess the words correctly and motivate the students who are not able to guess.
• Encourage the shy students to participate in the session.

Activity 2

• Select a paragraph from the textbook.
• Write the paragraph on the board but miss some important/key words and put blanks for them.
• Make a box below the text and write in all the key words taken from the paragraph with a few distracters.
• Divide the class into pairs and ask them to fill in the blanks using words from the box(this work must be done in the notebook).
• Ask them to use the context of the words and sentences to pick the missing words from the box and infer their meaning.

Sum up/ Conclusion

• Ask the students the new words they have learnt in this lesson.
• Ask them how the skill of guessing from the context will be useful for them.

Assessment

• Give them another paragraph from their textbook with difficult or new words and ask them to find out the meaning of 10 new words through guessing.

Follow up

• Make the students work on stories and see if they can guess the meaning of new/difficult words.
• Help them when checking the meaning from the dictionary.