Coordinator: Jafar Dorri
Email: Jafar_dorri@yahoo.com
Guidelines for Publishing in My Contribution
The column entitled My Contribution is a recent initiative which is intended to be a forum for sharing lesson plans and procedures for classroom activities. Our assumption is that all teachers have original ideas for running their lessons which work for them. We welcome a contribution which reflects an original idea. Ideas taken from teachers’ guides can be of no help unless they are sufficiently modified. The sign of an original idea is that it is a source of excitement and pride to the originator to the extent that he/she would like to tell others how it works. You can imagine yourself telling your colleague in a very simple clear language how you carry out the activity in your class in a stepwise manner. As your account is procedural it follows a certain structure which is different from the structure of a research article. The column includes instructions which tell the reader how to carry out the teaching activities like the ones one can find in a recipe. In some cases specially in the conclusion part you might want to provide a rationale for the activity by referring to the literature but this needs to be kept at a minimum.
It should be noted that a lesson plan is the blueprint of those teaching activities that are to be done in the classroom to teach the textbook content with the aim of achieving its objectives. Every teacher tries to plan the content in his/her own style so that he/she can teach systematically and effectively. You can see the detailed guidelines for writing My Contribution in in the box below.
Your “My Contribution” should include:
• A title, your name, affiliation, and email address;
• A “Quick guide” to the activity or teaching technique;
• No more than 700 words excluding the appendixes;
• An introduction (i.e. overview) followed by preparation and procedure steps and a conclusion.
It should be:
• In Microsoft Word format;
• Double-spaced with an extra space between sections.
Partial Viewing
First Name & Family Name: Mehdi Mirzaei
Affiliation: Shahid Abbas Poor, District 4
Email: mmirzaei164@gmail.com
Quick guide
Key Words: predicting ability, reading comprehension, students’ engagement
Proficiency level: grade 10 and above
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Activity time: 46 – 60 minutes
Materials: Students’ course book or a worksheet
Introduction
Reading comprehension is an inseparable part of any language learning process. Students are exposed to texts ranging from a simple mobile text message to a long newspaper article every now and then. So it is essential for them to learn the techniques and strategies to read better, deeper, and faster. The purpose for the students is to understand the message of the author who tries to communicate it via a reading passage. One very engaging, interesting, and constructive reading activity is partial viewing. In this reading game, students try to predict what the other half of each line is. In this process, each student covers half of the page from either side (left or right) or fold half of the page so he/she just sees half of each line. The purpose for the students is to practice predicting the text. The lesson will be elaborated below step by step.
Procedure
Step 1: Students are asked to look at the pictures and the title of the text and guess what the main ideas of the text might be. The teacher may like to write the main ideas on the board or just elicit some. Then students will be asked to fold the page or cover half of the page with a book/notebook so they can see only half of the page.
Step 2: Students read only half of the page (half of each line) and try to guess what the other half might be. Students write their guesses on a separate sheet of paper or on their notebooks. You can also invite them to share their understanding with their elbow partner.
Step 3: Now, the teacher asks some comprehension questions and students try to answer based on the half they have read. After that, students are asked to unfold the page and read the whole text to check their answers. Students are asked more comprehension questions to scan the text or guess the meaning of the new words based on the context.
Conclusion
This game-like reading lesson helps students to practice their text-based predicting ability which is an important sub-skill in a reading comprehension task. Students should practice to predict the content of the passage based on the title, available pictures, sub-headings, and even half of each line. During the lesson, students are engaged with the text and engaged in pair/group work activities. It is fun and educational.