LESSON TITLE: Travel Packing

LESSON #: Topic-based lesson #1

Teacher Name: Tsai-Chen Tsai (Bonnie)

Date: March 22 , 2018

nd

Preparation and Planning

ESL Course: Speaking Intermediate Level

Topic / Theme: Travel Packing

Length of Lesson: 80 minutes

Lesson Size: 4 Students

Objectives:

Listening

1. The students will be able to identify important information through watching and

listening to the video. The link of this can be found in the application section.

2. The students will also have to practice listening skills by listening to the teacher and other

classmates share their experiences of travel packing situations or things that need to be

done before going on a trip.

Speaking

1. The students will be able to clarify ideas in response to the teacher’s guiding questions.

2. The students will know how to give polite advice by using the five grammar structures:

⓵ I think you should… ⓶ How about... ⓷ Why don’t you... ⓸ If I were you, I

would... It would be good to...

3. The speaking tasks will also incorporate opportunities for the students to implement the

new vocabulary and their old and new knowledge about travel packing into

conversational English.

Reading

1. The students will be able to read the pre-travel notes and travel checklist made by their

peers and exchange ideas about what to bring.

2. The students will be able to gain the main idea from the video “12 Travel Packing Tips”

by reading the subtitles.

 3. The students will be given many opportunities to read the Power Point slides and class

materials throughout the lesson. The students’ objective will be to understand the

teacher’s instruction and the information given.

Writing

The students will be able to describe real-life related situations and give appropriate advice to

their peers with written language. They will be prompted to use any of the five grammar

structures that will be reviewed and be encouraged to use new vocabulary.

Bridging

Background Knowledge

The students all have travel packing experience from which they can easily create connections

with the topic. Additionally, they already have some basic knowledge about travel preparation.

They also know some travel vocabulary and can identify a few.

Linking

The lesson will officially start with two pictures of ‘packing,’ and the students will work in pairs

to explain or guess the meaning of ‘packing’ is. I will ask for a volunteer to share the meaning

before giving the standard definition. Furthermore, I will let them take an educated guess by

showing the definition of ‘unpacking’ to extend their understandings of the keyword. After the

students have grasped the idea of today’s lesson topic, I will trigger their past packing

experiences by asking various questions. Then to transition, I reveal that the truth behind today’s

subject is that spring break is coming up. This is followed by some questions like “Do you have

any travel plan for spring break?” “Have you started packing?” “Did you make any packing lists

or checklists?” to make connections with the topic introduced.

Engagement with New Material

 Active Learning Engagement

Since I already knew all the students’ travel destinations, I tailored the lesson materials to be

very authentic based on some specific students’ real travel cases and their different personalities.

For instance, I used the real information about the weather of their travel places with the

corresponding season; I considered gender difference in terms of different needs for travel

packing. I believe that there are strong connections between the lesson content and the students’

existing experiences outside the classroom where they will find this real-life-related

lesson to be useful. The students will be given opportunities to produce their own learning

materials by creating their own pre-travel notes and packing checklists. They will further give

and receive advice from their peers based on their notes and checklists they create. I believe

these activities will let them take a highly active role in their learning.

Ensure Engagement:

The lesson will be broken down with different forms of interaction including interactive lecture,

individual-work, pair-work, group-work, and the whole class working together. All these

grouping arrangements will be applied in alternation to add variety. To capture and maintain

student attention, I will always begin the interactive segment with an engaging trigger, such as

giving my personal examples or modeling how the activity works. I will also monitor the

students’ learning status and their reaction to my teaching so I can adjust or improve it. When

each activity is ongoing, I will circulate to individuals or groups to ensure material was

understood and be there to respond to any questions in timely fashion.

Application

Each activity is presented with different integration of the four skills: listening, speaking, reading,

and writing.
 Openings: lesson outline preview

I will start the lesson with a recap from the last lesson by calling for volunteers to recall some

teaching points before showing the recap slide. With the recap slide from the last lesson, I will

review the most important teaching points by browsing them and asking a random student to

explain a few. Next, I will show the slide ‘today we will…’ and go through the lesson outline

with the students. My purpose is to let the students have an idea about what they are going to

learn and do for the day.

Activity #1: Suitcase Frenzy

1. The students will create their ‘information notes’ for later use by listening to a tape

recording, which talks about two travel cases and the ‘weather forecast’ by using the

worksheet: “Whose suitcase?” (Appendix 1).

2. The students will be asked to work individually with the worksheet: “Whose suitcase?”

(Appendix 1). The task is to group the appropriate items from the packing list into two

different suitcases.

3. The teacher will check the answers on the worksheet with the whole class by going

through the ‘mixed-up items,’ which includes some new vocabulary. This part is going to

be an interactive lecture: the students will be encouraged to take a guess or give

explanations of some of the vocabulary; the teacher will use ‘Google Image’ for the

students’ understanding.

Activity #2: Create the pre-travel notes

1. The students will be asked to create their own travel checklists with some guiding

prompts. They will be given a heads-up that the checklist is going to be shared and

exchanged with their peer for later use.

 2. The students will share their own notes with the whole class by using the grammar

structure: “If I am going for a vacation, I will ___before I leave.”

Activity #3: Give advice

1. The students will exchange their “Pre-travel notes” with their peers. They will then use

the handout: “Suggested travel checklist” (Appendix 3) to examine and check what

items their peer included/missed out.

2. The students take turns using the five grammar structures listed on the bottom of the

“Suggested travel checklist” (Appendix 3) to practice how to give polite advice to their

peers in terms of ➀ what to pack as the travel essentials and ➁ what things need to be

done before your travel.

Activity #4: Let’s start packing!

1. This part will start with two guiding questions— “What does your packing situation look

like?” and “Do you have any great packing tips?” for the students to speak up as a warm-

up.

2. The students will watch the video “12 Travel Packing Tips”, which provides some

useful packing tips. The students will be hinted to take notes if needed for the tips they

find useful.

-Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=164&v=yrwtexpqLW8

3. The students will work with their partners to discuss which packing tips they find useful,

inspiring, or impressive.

Assessment

Informal Assessment
Throughout the lesson, I will track the ongoing progress of the students regularly through

observation and conversation as an informal assessment. By using informal assessments, I can

gauge how well the students are digesting the new knowledge and further adjust my teaching

methods. In addition to this, I will monitor their learning status and give the appropriate support

when they are doing individual work or pair work.

Formal Assessment

I will assess how the students apply their new knowledge with a ‘test time’ session. This session

includes two part: in the first part, they will be asked to write down a travel packing problem that

they have faced/that they still have; afterwards, they will exchange papers with their peers. In the

second part, each student will be prompted to use any of the five grammar structures to give

written advice based on what they have learned from this lesson and their own ideas to their

peers. They will be prompted to use any of the five grammar structures and be encouraged to use

new vocabulary during this session. After these tasks are complete, I will collect the papers and

review them outside of class. For the first part, I will look into their sentence structure; for the

second part, I will focus on how they apply the five grammar structures (the main teaching points

of the lesson) to give advice to their peers. This formal assessment is designed to know if the

students understand how to use the knowledge they learned from the lesson in a practical way.

Closing

I will circle back to the slide ‘today we will…’ to review and check the objectives for today’s

lesson with the students. Next, I will show a simple packing tip to the whole class, and then ask

the students to find one useful packing tip that blows their mind as their homework, which they

will have a chance to share this tip by showing/explaining how it works in our next class meeting.

I will provide a recommended website as a source reference for them to complete the task.
 Technology

I will use Power Point slides to show all the class information and instructions. This will help me

emphasize important teaching points and provide visual information. The video “12 Travel

Packing Tips” and the “weather forecast” in the Activity #1 (Suitcase Frenzy) will be played

through the computer and the projector. I will also draw on the website ‘Cambridge Dictionary’

and ‘Google Image’ as useful tools for assistance when the students have hard time

understanding the meaning of specific new vocabularies. I hope I will have time to introduce two

amazing websites related to today’s lesson topic at the end of the class. All the links of the

websites I mentioned are listed below. Don’t forget to mention your PPT!

1. Cambridge Dictionary: https://dictionary.cambridge.org

2. Google Image: https://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi

3. Travel Checklist: https://www.travelschecklist.com

4. Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com

Reflection

Positives

The students were all able to make personal examples of travel packing and connecting their own

existing experiences with the lesson content appropriately. Most of the students shared a lot

when asked to discuss or answer my guiding questions. I tried hard to turn the classroom into a

community by making the lesson not only a lesson but also a practical workshop for them to get

more prepared for their upcoming travel.

Unexpected Situations

I confronted an issue of student cellphone addiction when I taught the lesson. A few students

didn't make good use of the given time to complete the tasks and were distracted by their phones,
especially during all the individual-work time. For example, one of the students did the task

hastily and started doing something irrelevant to the lesson like using her smartphones until I

came to her. When I checked her worksheet, I found that she hadn’t completed her worksheet

thoroughly. The worksheet was designed with several interconnected tasks: if the previous parts

were not done appropriately, the following parts could not be as planned. For this reason, I

encouraged and guided her to try and finish more. However, I ended up spending more time

addressing this part of activities rather than how I planned.

Next Time

Since this class was not actually my own class. I taught this lesson in the role of a teacher

candidate, who was observed and evaluated by my cooperating teacher and a supervisor. I didn't

set any classroom rules in the beginning like I used to do because I treated myself as a ‘guest’

teacher. In terms of how to improve the unexpected cellphone situation I mentioned above, I

believe I need more effective strategies to deal with classroom behavior issues and bring students

back from distractions. I think I should have still established my rules or at least made some

announcement to set the tone for the lesson, such as stressing that the students’ mobile devices

could serve as learning tools in the classroom instead of a negative distraction. Moreover, when I

do this lesson next time, I will reinforce the heads-up before the students start doing the tasks and

circulate around the classroom more to ensure that all the students are on the right track and

avoid students using the given work time to do irrelevant things.