I. Teaching aims and demands
1. Topic: 1) Talk about drama and theatre
2) Tell a short story and create a simple play
3) Write and act a simple play
2. Function: Ask for permission & Ask about possibilities
May I know what happened?
Surely you can tell an old friend.
It can’t be true.
Could you please explain?
We couldn’t find it ; It was lost.
Can’t you just wear a flower instead?
Maybe I could ask……
3. Vocabulary:
ball, jewelry, franc, continue, lovely, debt, tire, dormitory, recognize, diamond, precious, positive, besides, outline, quality, call on, bring back, pay off
4. Grammar:
The use of Modal Verbs-must/can/could/may/might
1) When you’re very sure of something, you use “must” in positive sentences and “can’t” or “cannot” in negative sentences.
2) When you think that something is very possible, you use “can”.
3) When you’re not sure of something, you use “could, may or might”.
II. Important points:
1. Talk about the given topics and have discussions.
2. Make up stories and plays with the purpose of cultivating imagination.
3. Communicate, act out the short plays and learn from each other.
4. Use the modal verbs must/can/could/may/might proficiently.
III. Difficult points:
1. How to direct students to make up a story.
2. How to instruct students to write and act out a drama.
IV. Teaching assignment:
The whole unit can be divided into five periods.
The first period Warming up and listening
Goals:
1. To encourage students to use their imagination for creative thinking about the pictures.
2. To learn to make up a story and act it out.
3. To develop students’ reasoning ability
Teaching Procedures:
Step 1 Warming up
* Watch the video of some scenes of the play Hamlet
1. Brainstorming: How many sorts of plays do you know?
Plot: tragedy/ comedy/ tragicomedy
Capacity: play of many acts/ one-act play
Era: historical play/ contemporary play
Form: modern drama/ opera/ song and dance drama/ pantomime（哑剧）
Scene: stage play/ broadcast play/ TV play
2.* Ask students to tell who wrote Hamlet they enjoyed at the beginning of the period and then list some of his other plays.
Comedy: All’s Well that Ends Well; As You Like It;
Measure for Measure ；The Merchant of Venice;
The Tempest; Twelfth Night
Tragedy: Hamlet; Julius Caesar; King Lear; Macbeth;
Othello；Romeo and Juliet
History: Henry IV; Henry V; Henry VI; …
* Show some pictures of the play Romeo and Juliet, let students guess what the name of the play is and then enjoy the video of some adapted parts of the play
3. Group work: Dealing with the three pictures on Page 15.
1) Dig out information about each picture as much as possible.
Ask the following questions to help the students:
1. Look at the picture. Is it about an adventure?
2. Who is the old man? Is he a real old man? What is he telling the young men to do, can you guess?
3. Are the two young men interested in what the old man is saying? Where do they go and what do they want to do?
4. What happens to them?
5. What’s the result?
2) Speak out to share the information.
2) Make up a free story.
Ask the students to pay attention to the following questions:
1. When and where did the story happen?
2. What did the old man say?
3.What is the map about?
4.Did they find the treasure?
5.What happened then?
6.What happened to the boy and the girl at last?
4) Act out the short play in three scenes.
Step 2 Listening
1. Pre-listening: 1) What do you think of the play?
(Suggested answers: scary/ frightening/ attractive/ mysterious/
…)
2) In our daily life, we sometimes meet with some mysterious
things. What clues can we use to solve the mystery?
(Suggested answers: fingerprints/ shoe prints/ footprints/
broken window/ broken glass/ cigarette end/ …)
2. Listening: Listen to the short play on the tape and choose the correct answers.
3. Post-reading: 1) Who might steal Mary’s necklace and cellphone?
2) How can you solve the mystery?
Step 3 Extension
This part aims at getting the students to use their mind and speak out what they think. There is no correct answer to the story.
Make up a short play in groups of 3 or 4 according to some or all the pictures given and perform the play.
Step 4 Homework
Work in groups. Choose one of the situations in Speaking Part on Page 16
and create a short play.
( 1,The class is divided into three large groups and each group is asked to create one of the follow-ups according to the three situations at page sixteen individually. 2, Each group is requested to choose four students to act it out. Work in groups. and create a short play.
The second period Speaking
Goals:
﹒Train the students’ spoken English.
﹒Improve the students’ imagination and ability of performance.
﹒Get the students to share as many classmates’ stories or plays as possible.
﹒Increase participation and learn from each other.
Procedures:
Step 1 Sharing follow-ups
1. The students are requested to exchange their different follow-ups in groups of three.
A1 B1 C1
A2 A3 B2 B3 C2 C3
2. The students are regrouped to share different follow-ups of different stories.
A1 A2 A3
B1 C1 B2 C2 B3 C3
3. Some students are asked to come to the front and tell the follow-ups.
Step 2 Role-play
Four students of each group are asked to the front to act out the whole story.
Step 3 Listening to stories and telling morals
1. Listen to the following stories and then tell what the moral of each story is. ( Watch videos while listening. )
1) Once upon a time there was a man who loved to eat eggs. He owned a hen which laid one egg for him each day, but that did not satisfy the man. One day he came up with the idea that if he cut open the chicken’s stomach then he would find a lot of eggs inside. So he cut open the chicken’s stomach, hoping to find dozens of eggs. But to his great disappointment, he didn’t find even one single egg. And to make things worse, he was never able to eat eggs again.
Moral: If you are too greedy, you can lose everything.
2) In the state of Song in old China, there was a farmer who was working in the field. One day, a hare jumped out from nowhere. The hare was shock to see a person standing in front of it. So it quickly ran away. While running here and there, it knocked into a tree stump and died. The farmer was excited. How wonderful, he thought, without lifting a finger, he had got a hare. From that day on, the farmer just sat by the stump all day long, doing nothing but waiting for another rabbit to come by. The days went by, however no hare ever appeared. The farmer’s field became neglected, overgrown with weeds. The story gave rise to the idiom “waiting for the hare by a stump”.
Moral:
Those with narrow and limited experience, don’t know what to do given a different situation.
Some people want something but pay no effort for it .
2. Watch the video and tell the story in your own words.
1).Once upon a time there’s a lazy man who didn’t actually have a proper job. He made his living only by stealing. He tried almost stealing everything belonging to his neighbor, even chickens and clothes. One day, after being kicked out while stealing his neighbour’s chicken, he saw a big bell in an old temple. He soon came up with another good idea: he was planning to steal the whole bell to sell. But it is not an easy job. Then he thought for a while and decided to hammer it into small pieces and then sell the steel to get some money. The first time he hit the bell with the huge hammer, the bell made loud noises. Then he covered his own ears with an earphone, believing if he himself couldn’t hear the noise, neither could others. As soon as he hit the bell with all his strength the monks heard the loud noise and came over, giving the lazy man a good beat up.
2) Moral: Stealing doesn't pay.
Never cheat yourself and others as well.
Step 4 Summary
Many stories or plays have morals. As we know, in addition to reading for specific information, we read for pleasure and enjoyment. We read to understand the writer’s ideas and to enjoy the writer’s way of telling these ideas. Enjoy more stories; enjoy your life.
Step 5 Homework
Preview the reading passage “ The necklace ”.
The third period Reading
Goals:
1. Further develop students’ reading ability as well as listening and speaking abilities.
2. Create chances for the students to act out a play. Cultivate their performing skills.
3. Learn some useful words and expressions.
4. Point out the most important themes of this play involving the dangers of human vanity.
Teaching procedures:
Step 1 Warming up
Begin the class by showing some photographs of famous plays involving both China and other countries . Get the Ss to guess the name and the writer of each play. Ask the Ss what the key elements of a play are (time , place, characters, plot etc.)
Step 2 Lead in
Then introduce the photos of the Necklace and the background of the French writer Guy de Maupassant and some of his famous works such as BALL OF FAT(羊脂球)，THE STORY OF A FARM GIRL etc.
Step 3 Fast-reading
Today we are going to learn one of his famous works The diamond necklace .Now please listen to the tape and read the play carefully .Pay attention to the key words: when , what ,who ,where .After reading, check if the Ss have got the key elements of the play. Deal with the three scenes of the play in this way.
Step 4 Careful reading
Ask the Ss to go through the play again in order to get more details about the clues of the necklace.
The clues of the play will focus on some verbs related to the key plot of the necklace. For each part of the main plots , get the Ss to answer more detailed questions.
Step 5 Consolidation
After the students get a clear picture of the whole story, ask the Ss to change the dialogue form into a story form..
According to the main plot of the play, encourage the students to retell the whole story with the help of pictures.
Step 6 Further discussion
Task 1 Story-discussion
Make a remarkable contrast with two pictures of Mathilde ,then ask why Mathilde became so old and whether ten years of hard-work is worthwhile.
Task2 Further-discussion
As we know , Mathilde suffered a lot from the shortcoming of human vanity. Because of this , she and her husband had a tough life for ten years and they still needed to struggle for the rest of their lives. Therefore they had paid high price for their vanity. Their tragedy is due to what they value most in life .
Ask the question: What do you value most in your life ?
Let the students discuss in groups.
Task 3 A dialogue between Aladdin lamp and Mathilde
In our lives, we always made mistakes more or less ,for no one is perfect in the world. Needless to say, sometimes we can’t help ourselves regretting. But with the magical power of Aladdin lamp, maybe we can realize our dreams, so can Mathilde. The magic power of Aladdin (阿拉丁) lamp can help Mathilde realize one wish. Please make up a dialogue between Aladdin and Mathilde.
Task 4 Continuing the play
Can you imagine what will happen after everything is out ? Please make up Scene 4 using your imagination. This is also the homework for this period.
The fourth period: Language study
Goals:
1. Direct the students to memorize, understand and use the following words and expressions: continue, ball, recognize, diamond, jewel, pay off, call on, any more, day and night, pay back, at all, at most, etc.
2. Enable the students to use the modal verbs must, can/could, may/might
Teaching procedures
Step 1 Revision
1 Greetings
2 Play-acting
1) Check the students’ acting work. Get some groups to act out their creative ending of the play of “The necklace” in front of the class.
2) Offer them some possible endings which are typed on the screen.
Possible ending 1:They decided to go Jeanne and asked for the real diamond necklace. And Jeanne took pity on them and returned it to them.
Possible ending 2:They decided to go to Jeanne and asked for the real diamond necklace. But Jeanne refused.
Possible ending 3:Hearing the story, Pierre felt still very excited and angry. He decided to get back the real diamond necklace but Marthilde stopped him doing so.
Possible ending 4:Hearing the story, both Mathilde and Jeanne quarreled with each other. Soon they became mad.
……….
Step 2 Word study
1. Guess the words
T: First let’s see word-guessing. One student gives the answer, the other makes a sentence with it. Are you clear?
S: Yes.
The first letter of the word has been given. The meaning of the words is given in the brackets.
1. c__________ ( to go on )
2. b__________( a large formal party at which people dance seen him or her before )
3. r___________( to know who someone is because you have seen him or her before )
4. d___________( a very hard, precious stone )
5. j____________( beautiful things that are usually made of valuable materials )
2. Talk about phrases
Choose the right phrases for each of the blanks.
pay off, call on, any more, day and night, pay back, at all, at most
1. She had to take several jobs to ______ he debts.
2. People used to drink the water from the lake, but now they can’t do that ______ because of the pollution from the factory.
3. They had to work ______ to make enough money to buy a house.
4. Peter wore his new ring when he went to ______ his mother.
5. Some jewellery is not that expensive; a diamond ring costs 2,000 yuan _______.
6. There was no way he could _______ the money he borrowed from his father on time.
7.Emma is a vegan and does not eat any animal products_______.
T: Now let’s talk about the phrases. First I’d like some students to translate them one by one. If you have any trouble, please let me know. Who would like to have a try?
Step 3 Grammar
1. Lead-in
Show the students two pictures of “The necklace”, and ask them:
For the first picture: How do you think Mathilde feels when she sees the diamond necklace?
And help the students answer the question, “ I am pretty sure that she is very happy.” “Yeah, she must be very happy.” “ Maybe she feels sad because she doesn’t have so much jewellery herself.” “ Yeah, she can/could/may/might be sad.”
For the second picture: How do you think Mathilde feels when she is dancing at the ball with the necklace on? ( She must be very excited.) Can she be very sad? ( She can’t be sad. But she may be a little bit nervous, for she has never been invited to such a ball.)
Make the students understand the usage of the modal verbs
Step 4 Practice
1. Rewrite the sentences using must or can’t
T: Look at Ex. 1on Page 19. First look at the example. ( Teacher reads the example and explains when we are sure of something, we use must in positive sentences and cannot or can’t in negative sentences.)
2. Complete the dialogue
T: Please read the dialogue on Page 20 carefully and fill in the blanks with proper modal verbs. Check your answers with your partner, then ask some students to report your work.
Step 5 Guessing game
Show the students six boxes. In each box, there is a thing or a person the students are familiar with. ( They are a nice birthday cake, a terrible shark, a beautiful cellphone, a pretty necklace, the statue of liberty and a picture of Yang Liwei.).
First, get them to decide which box they want to open, and then ask them to guess what they think is in the box by using the modal verbs. After the box is open, ask them what they are going to do with the thing or person in the box. Encourage them to practise their oral English.
Step 6 Consolidation
Get the students to make up different language situations by using the modal verbs. First, give them an example situation, and then ask them to make up new ones.
Mary: Tom, doing homework is so boring!
Tom: I think so. Let’s do something interesting. Mum is at work now!
Mary: What about playing computer games?
Tom: That’s great! Mum can’t be back home right now!
(……. the phone is ringing……)
Mary: Who can it be ?
Tom: It must/can/may/could/might be mum.
Mary: She must want to know whether we are doing our homework now!
(….. pick up the phone……)
Tom: Hello, oh, mum! we are busy doing our homework now!
(….. hang up the phone …..just at that time……someone is knocking at the door……….)
Mary: Oh, mum is coming. What should we do?
Tom: it can’t be mum, she just called us!
Mary: Aha! you are right. Can it be dad?
Tom: No, dad is out on business. Oh, it must/can/may/might/could be Bob! he said he would visit us.
…..go and open the door…Tom: Oh, my!
Mary: Hurry up! we are in danger and let’s continue the fighting in the game!
Mum: what are you fighting with ,Mary ?
Step 7 Homework
Divide the class into eight groups and get the students to write a modern edition of “ The necklace ”( 现代版的项链 ), and then direct it and act it out by themselves. At the end of the unit, we are going to hold a play competition.
The fifth period Integrating skills
Goals:
To learn to discuss and perform a play.
To learn to write a short play
Teaching procedures
Pre-task
Step1 Story-telling
Tell the story after watching the flash play named “Buying the necklace”
Suggested story:
A lady together with her husband went to a jeweller’s to get a jewel for herself. When she found the ones she liked, the shop owner said they had been ordered. She had no choice but to leave the shop disappointedly. But when her husband left, he said to the owner quietly, “Please send my thanks to the person who has placed the order.”
Step2 Story- acting
Act out the flash play.
While-task
Step3 Reading
Have a comment on their story-telling, story-acting and encourage them to write a play. Lead them to another class, where we can learn how to write a play..
Task1 Individual work
Have a fast reading. Get students to know different roles in class, that is, make a self-introduction of different characters and ask students to guess who they are.
(Tim : I prefer playing computer games very much and often act as one of the heroes. I think the games are a bit like play.
Jim: Oh, I can make the end of the story more interesting, more wonderful.
Joy: I like to tell stories. What about the story of a girl and an alien ?
Sarah :Yes, some TV programmes are just like plays. Here’s a story from TV. One day, a student met her clone. And…)
Task2 Group work
Create a short play. Divide the whole class into 4 groups to rehearse the play and act out in front of the class
Story one
Suggested design:
Summary
A student goes to see her grandmother who lives on the other side of the town. On the way to her grandmother’s, she meets an alien who takes her for a ride in his spaceship. The alien takes her to the future and shows her what the world will look like in the future. Then she goes back to her grandmother and tells her about the future, but her grandmother doesn’t believe her.
Scene 1
Place: on the way to her grandmother’s
Time: one morning
Characters: a girl, an alien
Scene 2
Place: in front of the spaceship
Time: in the afternoon
Characters: a girl, an alien
Scene 3
Place: at the girl’s grandmother’s
Time: in the evening
Characters: a girl , her grandmother
(Choose from the three scenes and present dialogues)
Story two
Suggested design:
In the second story, the clone said that she would live with the family. I’m wondering whether the girl will take the clone home. Get the different opinions from the students.
Discussion: Will the girl take the clone home ? Why ?
(Now you can go everywhere in the classroom, find your clone and carry out a dialogue. In the dialogue, you can take the clone home, refuse her or you can make other decisions.)
Acting out Use your ideas and carry out dialogues between the girl and the clone
Task 3 Class work
Summarize the acting skills and comment on the performing just now
Remember the lines
Speaking clearly
Understanding feelings
Team work
How to use your voice
How to move on the stage
Build up your confidence
Learn to notice people around you
What expressions to use
Task4 Discussion
Besides being a student, what other roles do you play in real life? Which one do you like most ? Why ?
Post-task
Task1 Story-telling
Describe the pictures from the computer games and lead them to get various answers
with their imaginations.(wonderland---a girl asking the way---killing the genie---saving the mother)
Suggested story
A girl came into a wonderland to save her mother kidnapped by a genie. After she overcame difficulties, she killed the genie and saved her mother. To her great surprise, her mother changed a lot and….
Task2 Story-writing and perform it
Give tips on how to write a play and perform it
1.Write an outline of the plot.
2.Decide what each person should be like. Make s short list of his or her qualities.
3.Write out the dialogue.
4.Decide which role each group member will play.
Step 4 Homework
Write a play about the wonder place
Step5 Assessment
Task1 Individual work for self-assessment
*Can you make up a story?
*Can you write down an outline of the plot?
*Can you write down a short play?
*Can you decide what the action of the play should be?
*Can you decide what each person should be like in a play?
*Have you performed your play in front of the class?
*What have you learned in this unit?
*What are your strong points and weak points？
Task2 Group work
Group Assessment
Times Names
speaking in groups
Speaking in class
Acting in groups
Acting in class
General assessment