Reading

Teaching aims:

Ⅰ. Knowledge:

1. Get some information about St Petersburg and how people recover the destroyed city and cultural relics.

2. Words and useful expressions. restore, replace, recreate, in ruins, under attack, give in, in pieces, bring…back to life, come true, under attack

3. Some grammar points. Word formation: re-; Present perfect passive voice.

Ⅱ. Feelings and attitudes:

1. Get the students to know that the cultural relics are rare. It is hard to recover if they are destroyed.

2. Get the students to realize that the power of the people is so great. They can overcome the difficulties and make something impossible possible.

3. We should do something in our daily life to stop the damage. Some damages are caused by human beings.

Ⅲ. Ability:

1. Enable the students to get key information after reading.

2. Develop students’ cooperation spirit.

3. Improve their reading and analyzing abilities.

Difficulties:

1. The understanding of the whole text

2. How to get the right answers in skimming.

Teaching procedures:

Step1 Greeting

Step2 Pre-reading. (7 minutes)

Review the topic: culture relics and sites students have learned in the previous lessons. Then raise some questions discussed by students of group four. Give them 3 minutes to prepare. Present some pictures of some famous cities, so the students’ attention is attracted on the topic

Questions: 1. As we all know, there are many great cities in the world, such as Beijing, Pairs, New York etc. in your opinion, what makes these cities great?

2. What’s your favorite city? Why?

3. What cultural relics are there in your hometown? How important are they?

Choose 3 or 4 students to answer each question. (4 minutes)

Hints: 1. The capital of a country/ centre of transportation/ with large population/ some important events happened in that city./ some great people have been there,etc.

2.The reason: nice weather/ beautiful scenery/ special custom/ hometown,etc.

3.Yue Temple, Bai Causeway, Su Causeway, Li Ying Temple, etc. They are important parts of Hangzhou’s history.

Goals: These questions are aimed at cultivating student’s speaking ability and the way of thinking and also spirit of teamwork.

Step3 Skimming (5 minutes)

Give students 3 minutes to go through the passage as fast as possible while the tape should be played in order to limit the time of reading. Students can underline or circle important words and sentences. After that, give them some simple questions to answer.

1. When was St Petersburg built and who built it?（300 years ago, Russian Czar Peter the Great.）

2. In 1941, who tried to destroy the city? ( Germans.)

3.When the Nazis had gone, what did the people of St Petersburg do? ( Rebuild the city.)

4.How can we describe the people of St Petersburg do? (Strong, proud and united.)

Then do the Exercise Two in post reading: True or False questions.

Goals: Train students’ reading speed and develop their ability of getting key information.

Teach some new words: the Neva River, the Russian Czar, Peter the Great, St Petersburg.

These words should be explained in accordance with certain background. That is to say, let student know something about Russian history.

Step4 Scanning (19 minutes)

Ⅰ Deal with the important words, expressions and some grammar points.(3 minutes)

Word: restore, replace, recreate, in ruins, under attack, give in, in pieces, bring…back to life, come true, under attack.

Sentences: where is a river, there is a city. It is true that…. Do everything we can to do something, be located in, be an important part of one’s history.

Grammar: the present perfect passive voice.

Goals: Grasp the useful expressions, language points, important sentence structures and grammar points. This can help students understand the text more easily.

ⅡAsk students to read the text carefully paragraph by paragraph in 5 minutes and find out topic sentence of each paragraph. Finally, encourage them to summarize the general idea of each paragraph. As for each question, give student 5 minutes to discuss in groups.

Questions:

1. Why do people think St Petersburg is a great city?

2. Why was it so difficult for people to rebuild the old palaces?

3. What did people use to help them rebuild the city?

4． Why are the people of St Petersburg heroes?

Choose several students to answer. (6 minutes)

Possible answers:

1. People think that St Petersburg is a great city because it was built by a great Russian Czar and has been the center of many important historic events. More importantly, it survived the Germans attack in 1941 and its people did everything they could to make it as beautiful as it once was.

2. The palaces were so badly damaged in the war that people thought it was almost impossible to rebuild them. Few modern Russian artists knew exactly what the palaces looked like and there were many missing parts and pieces. The project, restoring the former glory of the city, required hard work, patience and devotion.

3. The Russian artists used old paintings and photographs to rebuild St Petersburg.

4. The people of St Petersburg are heroes because they have made something impossible possible. They have successfully rebuilt the palaces without destroying their old beauty. With hard work, patience, devotion and love for their cultural relics, they have shown that dreams can come true.

Goals: These questions are raised to train students’ ability of summarizing, organizing and cooperation as well as to achieve the ethic aims

Step 5 free asking (3 minutes)

Give students 3 minutes to ask whatever they don’t understand after reading the text. Ask other students to give the answer if they can. If they can’t work out these problems, teacher helps them.

Goals: this step shows the students-centred principle. Students find out the problems and solve it actively.

Step6 Consolidation(3 minutes)

Fill in the blanks.

300 years ago, the Russian Czar Peter the Great built a new ________---St Petersburg. It has been the center of many important _________ in history. In 1941, it was under ______ for 900 days, but the people never ________ ________. After the Germans left, the city was almost in ________. People decided to ________ the city. It was ________ to save the palaces and buildings without _________ their old beauty. With the ______ of old paintings and photographs, people were able to _______ ________ the beauty of their culture and history. Strong, proud and _______, the people of St Petersburg are modern ________ of Russia.

Goals: Help students review the content of the text as well as some important words and expression.

Step7 Further discussion. (7 minutes)

Now, many cultural relics are destroyed by human beings. We know the power of people is great. So is their power of damaging. We should do our best to prevent this situation from going worse. For high school students, we should protect everything nearby, for example, at school or in the public place where we go. Think about what we can do to stop the damage. (4 minutes). Ask several students to express their ideas. (3 minutes).

Goals: Achieve the third aim of feelings and attitudes. At the same time, the ability of speaking, words organization and cooperation is trained.

Step 8 Conclusion. (2 minutes)

Through the discussion, we can see the importance of protection. We must do our best to stop damaging in our daily life. If everyone makes efforts, the world will be better and better.

Goals: Get the students to understand what our duties are. Achieve the ethic aims.

Step9 homework (1 minute)

1. Do exercise 2 and 4 in scanning part on the exercise book.

2. Say something about St Petersburg using your own words.

Goals: Consolidate the knowledge they’ve learned. Check their efficiency in class. Develop their ability of organization of sentences.