Teaching Plan of Unit 1

Making a difference

Tasks which should be achieved in this unit:

a. Achieve language skills and related knowledge about the topic of science and scientist;

b. Learn to use the following sentence structures:

That’s correct /true.

There is no doubt that ……

It’s clear that…..

It’s hard to say.

I doubt that … …

Well, maybe, but … …

What’s your idea ?

Have you thought about … …

c. Vocabulary in this unit:

undertake, analysis, obvious, within, agriculture, gravity, debate, biologist, scan, boundary, promising, graduate, disable, theory, seek, misunderstand, scientific, observe, observation, match, predict, unhappiness, astronomer, curious, microscope, telescope, heaven, punish, intelligent, patient, experiment.

d. Useful expressions:

work on, go by, be/get engaged to sb. , go on with, dream of, turn out, take a look at, what if, the other way around, hope for, in fact, in the 1970s, mean to do sth. , according to , believe in, a number of, test the theory, use up, in order to , search for, stop sb. from doing sth.,etc.

e. Grammar:

the infinitive

some examples for you to illustrate its usages:

1. It’s important to learn a foreign language well.

2. Nothing in the world is to be feared.

3. It’s hard to say.

4. He offered to help us.

5. He usually has a lot of work to do on Sundays.

6. We eat to live , but we don’t live to eat.

7. In order to catch up with his classmates, he worked even harder.

8. He traveled around the world to give lectures.

9. To explain what they have seen, they built a theory about how things happen and the causes and effects.

10. Hawking explains what it means to be a scientist and how science works.

11. Readers are pleased and surprised to find that a scientist could write about his work in a way that ordinary people could understand.

12. Do you have anything more to say for yourself?

Warming up

Activities: 1. Introduce the persons you visited during the summer holiday;

2.Collect the names of as many famous scientists as you know and explain what the one you know well did in his life.

(the following questions may help you in the discussion: Who is he /she ? What is he/she?

What does / did he do in his life? )

Listening:

Aim: to integrate listening

1. Make your students clear about the tasks first, and tell them what they should do after finishing the tape.

2. Play the tape once again if necessary.

3. Discussing the answers by group work.

4. Check the answers.

5. Finishing the listening tasks in the workbook.

Speaking:

1. Encourage your students to be brave enough to practice, and guide them to finish the speaking task in the workbook..

2. Allow them 10 minutes or more to do group work.

3. Ask every group to make one or two sentences using the words represent/ branch/ debate

Pre-reading: questions:

Have you ever heard of Hawking?

How much do you know about him?

Reading:

Skim the text quickly and answer the questions:

Read the story slowly for information and answer true/ false exercise.

Discussion in group of four or six:

What can we learn from the experience of Hawking?

Writing:

Ask students to develop what they have discussed into a passage of about 100 words.

Tips for writing:

Write creatively so you end the story in an interesting style(for example :funny, sad or happy)

Use correct tenses and sentence structure

Pay attention to punctuation

Check your work for mistakes

Pair activity: Improve writing by examine each other’s work and give advice.

Language study:

Ask students to study the following sentences and try to get the meaning of the sentences, encouraging them to use a dictionary if necessary.

1. The couple used up all their money to seek their 5-year-old son, who got lost months ago.

2. The police let the man go after they found out that his DNA fingerprint didn’t match what they had got from the crime scene.

Grammar:

Give some examples to students and ask them to study the usage of the infinitive:

1. It’s important to learn a foreign language well.

2. He offered to help us.

3. He usually has a lot of work to do on Sundays.

4. We eat to live , but we don’t live to eat.

5. He warned us not to go out at night.

6. What he wants to do is earn his own bread.

Ask them to make as many sentences as they can, using the infinitive.

Integrating skills:

Aims: improve reading and writing skills.

Explain some important sentences and help students to solve problems they met during the course of studying this unit.

Out-of-class work:

Learn the new words by heart.

Read more materials about science and scientists from newspapers or magazines.

Collect some information about a famous scientist who you are most interested in.