TEACHER:    Erin McCloskey, Concord Academy
                 Erin_McCloskey@concordacademy.org

LESSON TITLE: "Cuidemos nuestro ambiente," part 2: Fun with past participles

LESSON SKILL TARGETED: PACE model for grammar

CLASS LEVEL:  IV
 
 

TARGETED STANDARDS

1.1 Interpersonal Communication   1.3 Presentational Communication   4.1 Language comparisons   5.1 School and Community   5.2 Lifelong Learning

I. OBJECTIVES

    (Students will read and discuss an article about the environment.)

    4.1 Students will identify past participles in the article

    4.1 Students will review the different uses of the past participle

    1.1/1.3/4.1 Students will use the past participle to reconstruct information from the
    text by forming questions using the targeted grammatical structures, and then students
    will interview each other

    5.1/5.2 Students will use the WWW to research more information on the environment

II.  MATERIALS

    A.  Newspaper article on environment
    B.  Overhead projector
    C.  Sentence completion activity
    D. Transparency of article

III.  PROCEDURES

    A.  Presentation:

        1.  Completion of reading comprehension lesson ("Cuidemos nuestro
        ambiente part 1").

    B.  Attention:

        1.  Class returns to the first paragraph of the article.  Sentence by sentence,
        class provides all the past participles included in the paragraph.
        2.  In pairs, students skim the rest of the article and underline all remaining
        past participles; they then check their answers against an overhead
        transparency containing all the underlined participles.
 

    C.  Co-Construction:

        1.  Teacher facilitates a review of the uses of the past participle by asking
        questions and referring to the text:  (What are the endings of the past
        participle, when do the endings change and why, when don't they and why,
        what is it called when a participle is used with HABER, etc.)
        2.  Students compare use of participle in Spanish with its use in English and
        review similarities and differences.
 

    E.  Extension:

        1.  Students return to article and identify what use of the past participle
        applies to each example in the article (passive voice, adjective, perfect
        tense).
        2.  Students form questions about the article by completing the worksheet.
        3.  Students interview each other about the environment using their questions
        and the grammar.
        4.  Students will recap the answers to their questions for the class.
        3.  Students use the WWW to research the environmental issue in Venezuela
        most interesting to them.  They should: a) find an article, b) prepare a brief
        summary of the information for presentation to the class the following day,
        c) use the overhead to present a sentence from the article that includes a past
        participle to the class, and d) conduct a brief analysis of its grammatical
        function with the rest of the class.

IV. CULTURAL INFORMATION

    A.  Information about the environment in Venezuela from newspaper article and the
    WWW

V. TECHNOLOGY USED

    A.  Overhead projector
    B.  Internet