METHODS COURSE I: SURVEY OF BEST PRACTICES IN TESOL

Differentiated Lesson Plan

Title of Lesson Mass media

By Rabia El Antaki, Tangier, Morocco

Student Profile My students’ ages vary between 15 and 20 years old. They are in
their second year of high school. They have been studying English
for a year and three months 3 times each week. They are specialized
in economics starting from this year. They all come from different
backgrounds: some of them were art students while others were
science ones. Their level could vary from low to high intermediate.
I have 43 students: 32 girls and 11 boys.

Learning profile Most of the students are accustomed to the teacher using only one
learning strategy: lecturing. So I had difficulties identifying their
learning styles but after a questionnaire that I implemented at the
beginning of the year, I came to the conclusion that 13 of them are
kinesthetic and display a lot of fervor when they have to deal with
activities that allow them to go around the classroom and participate
in role plays, 17 are visual as they usually ask me to write on
blackboard what I or their classmates say, they love videos and slide
shows, 13 students are auditory since they seem very comfortable
when they listen and they respond appropriately without ever
writing anything, they like listening activities.

Class Profile 43 students 2 hours

Target Language - Introducing Vocabulary items linked to mass media

- Introducing grammatical structures dealing with adjectives in
–ed and –ing used for opinion.

Target Content - What are the most important means of communication?

What media do people use in the world? Why do people
choose such or such medium?
Students will be dealing with two interpretive skills. They
will
- listen to and watch a video “For Youths in US, a Jump in
Media Use” from VOA
- Read a text on three people’s media preferences
Students will be dealing with two presentational skills. They
will
- Speak and interact about media and media preferences, do a
TV presentation
 - Write articles using different media: internet, newspaper
article.

Objectives By the end of the lesson,

- Students will be able to speak about media, media
preferences using target vocabulary.
- Students will be able to express their opinions using
adjectives in –ed and –ing.
- Students will incorporate new vocabulary in writing
- Students will work on their own, in pairs and in groups
- Students will be able to use reading strategies: top-down and
bottom-up procedures to approach the text.
- Students will be able to use listening strategies top-down and
bottom-up procedures to understand a video
- Students will be able to interact with their classmates and
with teacher
- Students will be able to relate their learning to their life
experiences
- Students will be able to play roles and participate actively in
their learning
- Students will be able to participate in contests
- Students will have expanded critical thinking skills such as
comparing, analyzing, arguing, summarizing and
synthesizing
- Students will have developed cooperative learning

Materials - Textbook for the reading text

- Blackboard
- Chalk
- Laptop computer
- Cue cards for vocabulary practice
- Exercise photocopies
- Video “For Youths in US, a Jump in Media Use” from VOA
- Worksheet Exercise of adjectives adapted from Pearson
Education Ltd 2006. Publishing as Pearson Longman.

Sources - Video “For Youths in US, a Jump in Media Use” from VOA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NElIgv8fRQo
 - Pearson Education Ltd 2006. Publishing as Pearson
Longman. All rights reserved. www.longman.com

- Mohammed Hassim, Mustapha Bilbil, abdelkrim Rasmy,

(2006)“Gateway to English” students’ book. Nadia Edition

Warm-up Procedure
10 minutes - As the previous unit dealt with education, teacher elicits
5 minutes for from students the differences between education in the past
preparation and 5 and education today. (They would respond: oral education,
minutes for books, internet, TV…)
discussion - Students are appointed to specific groups according to their
learning style. The visual students are given pictures of
people using different media. Students have to identify what
the media are. The auditory students have to listen to my
instructions and complete the following chart using their
background knowledge.

Electronic media Paper media

- -
-
-
-
-

- Kinesthetic students have to find in different parts of the

classroom slips of papers that I had hid about different
media. The instructions are given by auditory students.
After this first activity is finished, groups speak to each other
about the different mass media.

Presentation Pre-reading
Step 1 (focus on vocabulary)
- After students have identified the different media: television,
press, internet, the following words are written on slips of
paper: box of entertainment, newspapers, wired, channels,
10 minutes zapping, documentary, morning paper, satellite dishes,
remote control, world events, participate in polls, audio,
video, surfing, browse, online, information, events, reading
skills, enriching vocabulary, TV programs. Three boxes are
put on a desk, each box refers to one medium: TV, internet,
press. Students take a slip of paper randomly and try to find
out in which box it should go.
 Step 2 (Focus on grammatical structure)
- Students answer these questions (orally): T should try to
make most of the students participate.
 What media are you interested in?
 What media do you find interesting?
5 minutes  What media makes you excited?
 Do you find books boring?
 Do you think action films are frightening?
- T elicits the adjectives, their forms and their use (-ed, -ing,
opinion)
- SS do the following exercises
1) Read the opinions. Look at the 5 things in the box. Write the
correct word from the box before each sentence
Actor film book internet Press
a) I love being frightened by a good horror film.
b) The movie theater was crowded with fans of Tom Hanks.
c) I was surprised by the end of the film.
d) The special effects were amazing.
e) The last chapter is very exciting.
5 minutes
f) I am very interested in old newspapers.
g) The website was rather disappointing.
h) I was bored with the first chapter.

2) Read these opinions. Are they grammatically correct or incorrect?

Mark the opinions C (=correct) or I (= incorrect).
a) I didn’t enjoy the movie. It was very bored. (I)
b) The ghost story was very frightening. _
c) I was shocking by what I read on the net. _
d) The audience was over-excited and noisy. _
8 minutes
e) That Moroccan film sounds very exciting. _
f) I was embarrassing when they asked me to sing. _
g) It was very depressing to hear about world politics. _
h) I thought the story was very confusing. _
i) I was very tiring so I preferred to watch a romantic film. _
j) I switched off the TV because the talk show was boring.

While-Reading
Step 1(Skimming)
- Students look at the pictures, identify the speakers of each
2 minutes paragraph and guess where they are from (foreign names and
an international one)
- Read topic sentence of each paragraph and complete the
chart with the main idea of each text.

5 minutes Text 1 ……......................................................................

 Text 2 ……......................................................................

Text 3 ……......................................................................

Step 2(Scanning)
- Students are appointed to groups according to their levels,
each group is given different questions:
 High intermediate students read text 1 and summarize the
reasons behind Laura preferring the TV
 Intermediate students read text 2 and complete the sentences:
Tom prefers …………….. because………………. He doesn’t
feel passive when he……………… he entertains himself
by……………….. he thinks that the ……………..is a mixture
of……………., ………………. and……….
 Low intermediate students read text 3 and do the MCQ
1- Yasmina prefers:
- TV
6 minutes for low - internet
intermediate students - cinema
- newspapers

2- Yasmina
- Must follow the order in the newspaper
- Can choose the order she wants
- Must read only political events
- Finds that newspapers are only for old people

3- Reading the newspaper can

- Help people enrich their vocabulary
- Read unimportant events
- Help old people know about world events
- Help young people become good readers

Practice Post-reading
5 minutes Step 1 (Information gap) groups share information about each text
Step 2 (information retrieving) Students (individually) complete
the following sentences using the target vocabulary, the target
structure and the appropriate information they got from the reading
text and the discussions. At the same time, they should predict what
5 minutes media young Americans prefer and why.
Laura …………………………… ………………………………
Tom ………………… …………………………………………..
Yasmina ………………………. ………………………………….
Young Moroccans…………………………………………………..
I……………………………………………………………………..
Young Americans……………………………………………….

10 minutes break
Step 3 (watching a video) Students get in mixed ability groups
watch the video “For Youths in US, a Jump in Media Use” to
identify the uses of media by young Americans.
3.49 minutes for the - Stay in groups, express their opinions, compare their uses of
video media with that of Americans (they should use the adjectives
with -ed or -ing for opinion+all the media vocabulary )
10 minutes for Use the appropriate adjectives to express your opinions about
sharing the ideas Moroccan/American youth and media :

amusing, amused, disgusting, disgusted, satisfying, satisfied,

annoying, annoyed, depressing, depressed, enchanting, enchanted,
terrifying, terrified, moving, moved, relaxing, relaxed, boring,
bored

Evaluation Step 1 (Mind map). Students stay in groups and complete the
vocabulary mind map: Write as many words as they can for each
medium (vocabulary contest among groups)

NEWSPAPERS TELEVISION

10 minutes MEDIA

INTERNET CINEMA
 Step 2 (students evaluate each other) the same groups ask each
other 2 questions on vocabulary, 2 questions on adjectives with -ed
or –ing, 2 questions on listening and 2 questions on reading. (the
contest goes on) at the end of the two contests, the group or groups
who get the most grades will win.
Step 3 (students’productions) what media job would you like to
do? What topics would you like to deal with?
Students get in pairs according to their preferences and choose:
- To play the role of journalists and write an article for the
class bulletin board
20 minutes
- To play the role of webmasters and write an article for a
website.
- To play the role of TV presenters and guests (talk show)
T moderates and goes around to guide or facilitate the tasks
accomplishment

Follow-up Homework
1- High intermediate students get in groups of 4 and prepare a slide
show about the role of media in leisure and entertainment (leisure
and entertainment being the theme of unit 4)
2- Intermediate students get in groups of 4 and write an article about
advantages and disadvantages of reality TV for the class bulletin
board (Reality TV is a real issue these days in Morocco and students
talk every day about the reality shows)
3- Low intermediate students get in groups of 4. They are provided
with pictures about leisure, media and entertainment. They should
answer the following questions:
- What do the people in the pictures do?
- What activities do they practice?
- Which ones do you find most: interesting, boring, tiring, or
relaxing? Why?
- Which activity do you like to practice in your free time?
Why?
This should be done under the form of a talk show discussion.
The three activities are to sum up the media lesson and prepare
the students for the next unit to assure a smooth transition.

Comments/Reflection
Sixteen years ago, when I was a student teacher, the teacher trainers used to tell us regularly
to differentiate our instruction. I landed on my school with the biggest ideas and lots of
teaching ambitions among which differentiation was part and parcel. However, teaching
realities were so hard for a novice, and those experienced teachers who were planning their
lessons were doing it in the fashion of “one size fits all”. And although I implemented at the
level of my classes a lot of pair and group activities, somehow or another, differentiated
lesson planning was completely dropped from my teaching practices. Four or five years ago, I
started doing some research on the topic as I saw that my students were not learning in the
same way and in the same pace. Gradually, I included this concept in my lesson planning.
Now that I broke the ice on my part, I found it hard to break it on the part of the students. The
students in this class for example, sometimes refuse to get in groups according to level;
besides, when I give specific exercises to different students, they feel it as discriminatory.
This rejection comes mainly from the fact that they are used to one way of teaching: lecturing.
After two months and a half of working together, my students know now that the English
class is different from the other classes. The routines of pair and group work have already
been installed, and the continuous movements from one group to another or around the
classroom have become normal behaviors.
One other difficulty lies in the ministerial guidelines which restrict the teacher’s freedom as
s/he has to follow the directives of the curriculum even if they don’t take into account the
learning styles or preferences of the learners. So, in this lesson, I tried to respect the
guidelines while adopting a selective and supplemental strategy. I kept the small texts on mass
media because I think they might interest my students as they are said by young people. On
the other hand, I was selective on the grammar and vocabulary to teach. Actually, whenever I
have to plan my lessons, I find it too demanding to do everything all over again. I have to go
through the whole textbook to look for what vocabulary, what grammar structure suit a given
content and what instructional activities I should opt for to meet my students’ differences in
learning styles and preferences
Before tackling the texts, key vocabulary items related to the content area were introduced to
facilitate understanding. Students usually like such activities as they are designed to be carried
out according to their different ways of learning. I also opted for specific adjectives when
dealing with the grammar items that I have to teach: adjectives in –ed or –ing as first, they
appear in reading and second they would allow students to express their opinions about
different media (in the textbook, the grammar structure focuses on all kinds of adjectives,
which does not seem related to the theme of the reading passages). When I set the scene for
my students with appropriate vocabulary and a useful grammar structure that they would
need, I organized reading using a gradation strategy where students skim, scan, answer
questions, discuss, and reflect. Students were exposed to the four skills in an integrative way.
They practiced their competencies in interpretive skills since they read a text, listened and
watched a video; and they perfected their presentational skills as they were given the
opportunity to interact in speaking and writing.
However, one of the difficulties that I often encounter is with low achiever students; I usually
find difficulty in allowing them to join the other students no matter how their activities are
basically within their reach. On the other hand, the high achiever students are usually scoring
well even if the activities are far too challenging. But, at the evaluation stage of each lesson, I
usually ask my students to get in mixed ability groups to guarantee that all learners learn the
same thing even if the ways are different.
As far as timing is concerned, I find two hours too tiring for students although the activities
are varied, so I dedicated 10 minutes for a break.
I tried to differentiate learning using different strategies according to learning styles and also
according to different levels of students, but the fact that I have to divide the class into 11
groups (10 groups of 4 and one group of 3), makes my job very hard and the class a bit noisy
(I usually go home with a sore throat even if I try to minimize my TTT to the maximum). So I
am still trying to find out ways to facilitate my task and to make students work quietly.
Despite all this, I feel very satisfied with my students as they usually engage wholeheartedly
in the tasks that I try as hard as possible to make appealing.