Rationale

We have two language objectives, the first objective is that students will be able to use

proper tenses to explain events that have happened in the past, present, and future. The second

language objective is that students will be able to place past, present, and future in the proper

order. We’re reinforcing these ideas through various forms of input and output such as listening,

writing, speaking and comprehending. We first asked students to recall what they ate in the past,

if they are eating in the present, and what they will eat in the future. This is how we introduced

our vocabulary by using daily life activities, and drawing on students background knowledge.

The language objectives we have tie into our content objectives that we are teaching the students.

Our content objective expects students to understand the concept of past, present and future by

building off of their existing knowledge. It is important for them to be able to understand the use

of different tenses to identify important events in their life. “Language will be used naturally to

accomplish the task at hand. In addition, the language that is used will be context embedded

(Cummins, 1981)-- that is, rich in context clues inherent in face-to-face communication”

(Peregoy & Boyle, 2017, pg 104). Students will achieve the language objectives by being able to

speak with each other and using the language in a natural context to support language-learning.

We are incorporating interaction into the classroom by having students discuss with each

other what they did yesterday, what they are doing in the present, and what they are going to do

tomorrow. This allows students to use the new language with each other, encouraging the

production of new output. “Think-pair-share can be used… during instruction, to give students

time to think and process the material you are presenting” (Peregoy & Boyle, 2017, pg.184).

Once the students have completed the activity, we are conducting a partner share activity.

Students will have the opportunity to talk to a partner about the events that are on their timeline.
Partner pairs will then each share each others timeline events to the whole class. This promotes

interaction because they are able to receive more vocabulary based input, and think about what

really stood out to them.

We are presenting our content and language objectives to students in multiple ways

through explicit instructions and supplementary materials. This allows for various types of

learners to grasp the language and content better. “First, he spends more time before students

read the text to set the purpose for the unit, key into their prior experiences and knowledge of the

topic, and provide an overview of concepts and vocabulary using visual aids.” (Peregoy &

Boyle, 2017, pg. 97). To begin the lesson, we are explicitly stating what we want the students to

learn using student friendly language. We are making sure that students what objectives that we

are learning by using visual aids, which will help both English language learners and native

speakers who benefit from visual learning. We are also engaging in the background knowledge

of students, which helps the learners understand the new objectives and associate them with

things that they are already aware of. Using the transportation timeline model is one of the ways

we use to help students use their existing knowledge to understand the new content objective.

We teach students what transportation people used in the past, current ways we see today, and

ask them to make a prediction about what the future transportation will look like. This model

helps students to understand the new concept step by step by applying and expanding new ideas

with existing knowledge.

Throughout our lesson, we will be teaching and reinforcing new language while also

incorporating interaction with the students. We are doing this with the use of various forms of

input and output, and by explicitly stating our language and content objectives so students know

what is expected of them.

 Works Cited

Peregoy, S., & Boyle, O. F. (2017). Reading, Writing, & learning in ESL. New York, NY:

Longman.