Hello ExamSeekers,
A few weeks ago, I posted some tips on how to plan a lesson. My first post was an overview of the steps you have to follow: Parts of a Lesson Plan: What are the steps? [Part 1], then I wrote two other texts which focused on specific lessons: Receptive Skills Lessons [Part 2] and Language Lessons [Part 3]. Today, I’m writing about Productive Skills.
To start with, I ask you: What are Productive Skills?
There is a post about the differences between Receptive and Productive skills here: Check it out before moving on! But let’s keep in mind that for PRODUCTIVE SKILLS, I am talking about writing and speaking activities, okay?
Differently from Receptive Skills lessons (reading and listening), which require similar exercises, Productive Skills (speaking and writing) require different types of steps, so I cannot use the same structure for both. So, today, I’m going to focus specifically on writing, okay?
These are the steps you will probably use:
Warm-up / Lead-in – These have been mentioned for a while now. Keep in mind that you are focusing your lessons on writing, so at this step, avoid written activities.
Read for gist/detail/ideas – when producing a written activity, you need to have ideas to create it. Therefore, your students need to have read a text similar to the one they are going to write. You need to prepare a task based on the general idea of the text, specific information from the text, or ideas. Doing that, students will have a basis which they can depend on.
Model Analysis – after introducing the model text on the step before, you now have to provide a task that will require your students to understand the format of that previous text: analyze the mode. If you gave them a letter to read for gist on the step before, in this step, they should answer some questions related to the date, the sender, greetings and farewells, beginning/middle/end of a letter, for instance. If you gave them a recipe, your students should analyze aspects of this recipe, they have to understand that a recipe offers ingredients, and then the steps.
Practice / Preparation for writing tasks – some teachers divide this stage. Some teachers offer practice writing – which not always happen due to the lack of time to write and then rewrite. Some teachers give some time for the students to organize their ideas.
Writing Task – here is when the writing normally takes place. Teachers give their students plenty of time for them to use their ideas and write what was required.
These are the steps to be followed. What usually happens is that the teacher takes the writing tasks home, correct, and then give their students some time for them to rewrite their texts according to their mistakes and the teacher’s requirements. So when you are planning a writing task, keep in mind that feedback is also a step, which doesn’t usually happen in the same lesson, though.
I hope I have cleared some questions about the steps of Writing Lessons. But if you still have questions about the steps given today, make sure to comment in the comment session below. And don’t forget to follow the blog at:
Have a great weekend,
Patricia Moura