Comparative Grammar Project and Annotated Lesson Plan
Comparative Grammar Project and Annotated Lesson Plan-LED 6510
A. INTRODUCTION
Your Name:
Grade/age of students for whom the lesson was developed: 1st Grade
Concentration Domain: ELA
Title of the lesson: Can I Ask a Question
Materials and Digital Tools Needed: Overhead projector, computer with video projecting capabilities (or SmartBoard), paper, classroom materials (pencils, crayons, scissors, glue sticks, etc.), an assortment of everyday objects (legos, eraser, stuffed animal, toy car, etc.)
Time needed for the lesson: 60 minutes
B. LEARNERS & LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
· Language comparison, grammar focus of instruction, and establishment of relevance:
The focus of this instruction is on understanding and constructing sentences using subject-auxiliary inversion. In Spanish questions are formed the same way a statement is with the only difference being in punctuation and inflection. The English language question Can I ask a favor? is ¿Puedo hacer una pregunta? (I can ask a question) in Spanish with a question mark at the end and an additional inverted question mark at the beginning to indicate a question. Students in my class often ask permission for things using sentences that do not invert the subject and auxiliary. For example, they ask Teacher, I can get water? or I can sharpen my pencil? when the questions should be structured as Teacher, can I get water? or Can I sharpen my pencil? After several years of teaching ELs at this school, I am completely familiar with the fact that they are asking if they can do something, but I recently became aware of the fact that this difference in word order also affects how they understand me when I am asking them a question. For example, if I ask a student if I can take their paper (Can I take your paper?) there is often a delay before their response, even if they easily understand the words can, I , take, and paper. Previously I assumed this was because they were trying to translate the words I was using. Now I realize part of this delay is in processing the word order of the sentence and using context to figure out that I want to have their paper. By helping students learn how to structure questions using subject-auxiliary inversion, they will be better able to understand questions that are formed in this manner.
· Introductory Statement of Your Language Task:
The language task I will be focusing on in this lesson is subject-auxiliary inversion using the auxiliary can while working cooperatively with a partner to draw, color, and cut out a picture based on a video after playing a game on the carpet requiring them to recognize correct subject-auxiliary inversion in questions. Students love watching short videos on the SmartBoard and will be engaged with the simple vignettes shown in the selected video. Since I know they love games like “Simon Says” or “Mother May I,” the similar featured game will give them practice while keeping their interest in the activity. Finally, I know my students love to create pictures, drawings, and other artifacts representing things they have seen on TV, in movies, or in video games. The structured output activity will allow them to demonstrate their understanding of the video and the stories it showed.
· Review of Terminology – to be completed later
Input –
Output –
Enhancement –
Structured Input –
Structured Practice –
Structured Output –
· Annotation
Interlanguage theory accounts for the challenges presented by subject-auxiliary inversion during question formation. “Analysis of a learner’s interlanguage shows that it has some characteristics influenced by previously learned languages, some characteristics of the second language, and some characteristics, such as the omission of function words and grammatical morphemes, that seem to be general and to occur in all interlanguage systems” (Lightbrown & Spada, 2013). Since students are correctly translating the words from Spanish to English, yet incorrectly structuring the questions, there are influences of both languages present in their speech patterns.
C. STANDARDS AND OUTCOMES
· Standards:
RL.1.3 – Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.
RL.1.7 – Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.
SL.1.1 – Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
SL.1.2 – Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.
WIDA-ELD.1 – English language learners communicate for Social and Instructional purposes within the school setting.
WIDA-ELD.2 – English language learners communicate information, ideas and concepts necessary for academic success in the content area of Language Arts.
· Outcomes:
1. Students will be able to describe a character or setting from a portion of the video using words or pictures.
2. Students will be able to orally use subject-auxiliary inversion to ask questions and respond to questions correctly using subject-auxiliary inversion.
D. INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICE
· Engaging Students, Activating Prior Knowledge, and Setting Lesson Goals:
At the beginning of the lesson, I will gather students on the carpet and tell them we are going to watch a video with three different stories. I will tell them they need to pay careful attention to the video as they will be drawing a picture about it later. I will ask them about things they can and can’t do, such as hop on one foot or do a summersault using the question stem “Can you….” I will tell them we use questions to find out information all the time and not just at school.
· Instructional Procedure: Engaging Students in Actively Constructing Deep Understanding Incorporating Structured Input Activities
· Structured Input Activity
View “Can - Can you swim?” video as a class, stopping after each segment to discuss what happened (focusing on characters and setting) and how the word order changes when the characters are asking a question.
Annotation:
The Cognitive Perspective supports this activity because “language is learned through our perceptual and cognitive experiences and that like all other aspects of learning, language learning involves the discovery, categorization, and determination of patterns through the use of language” (Lightbrown & Spada, 2013). Students who watch and discuss the video will notice the patter of discourse that keeps repeating. One character asks “Can you…” and another character replies “Yes, I can….” It is through this process that students will see the patterns in asking and answering simple questions that will enable them to produce grammatically correct English questions.
· Structured Practice Activity
1. Gather students on the carpet. Have a variety of objects on the carpet. Take turns asking the student if they can take one of the objects. Additionally ask students if you can take various objects. Use a structure similar to the exchanges below:
Teacher: Andres, can you take the lego? (Ideally, Andres will take a lego.) Can you put it back?
Teacher: Can I take a crayon? (Ideally the class will respond yes.)
2. Continue with three or four of these exchanges, and then as teacher say “I can take the eraser.” Wait for students to respond or indicate confusion because you didn’t follow the pattern of asking “Can I….” Then rephrase the sentence with the correct form and continue playing the game.
3. Continue the game as before, but now occasionally change the question to a “I can” sentence occasionally.
Annotation:
Once the strategy students used to construct questions is known, input can then be structured to help students “abandon their inefficient strategies for more optimal ones” (Wong, 2005, p. 69). Since the problem is due to an unfamiliar word order, input can be structured to highlight the differences in form between Spanish and English. This is a referential activity since it requires students to “pay attention to form in order to get meaning and have write or wrong answers so instructors can immediately check if learners are indeed making the correct form-meaning connections” (p. 70)
· Output/Assessment Activity
1. Pass out paper, crayons, pencils, scissors, glue sticks, etc. to students in pairs at their desks. Ensure there is only one of everything so students MUST share the items.
2. Have each student use the items to create their own picture based on one of the vignettes in the “Can-Can you swim?” video.
3. Remind students that since they are sharing materials they must ask their partner if they can use the item they want before they just take it. For example, Student A would say, “Can I use the scissors?” and Student B would respond, “Yes, you can use them.”
4. Monitor students while they are working to determine if they are correctly asking questions using subject-auxiliary inversion.
Annotation:
Interaction Hypothesis accounts for the instructional design choices in this section. Lightbrown and Spada (2013) state, “conversational interaction is an essential, if not sufficient, condition for second language acquisition.” While students are working on their pictures/drawings they will not only be using the target skill of correctly inverting the subject and auxiliary, but they will also be discussing what they’re making and why. These additional opportunities for conversation will add to their acquisition of English.
· Closure—Students Summarizing and Synthesizing Their Learning:
To close the lesson have students bring their picture/drawing to the carpet and share what they made using turn-and-talk.
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E: REFERENCES:
English Singsing. (2016, August 21). Theme 20. Can - Can you swim? | ESL Song & Story - Learning English for Kids. Retrieved June 12, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jANerjPKC9E
Lightbrown, P. & Spada, N. (2013). How languages are learned (4th ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
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