Four Oxen and the Lion

     Here is an ESL lesson designed to give students practice with two different English topics.  The first is discussing routines and habits with both the adverbs of frequency (always, usually, often, sometimes, rarely, never) and the "X times per day/week/month/etc."  The second is expressing the past perfect tense with "used to."  (Thank you to 5minuteenglish.com for the quick primer on used to that helped me to organize this lesson.)

      The entire lesson is embedded into Aesop's Fable of the Four Oxen and the Lion, which has the moral lesson of "United we stand; Divided we fall."  The lesson is designed to help students learn through context, and is designed to work with principles of Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS).  (About TPRS; TPRS Books & Materials).   (I personally combine TPRS principles and Socratic questioning for most of my teaching, and it has worked well for students ranging from kindergarten through university level.)

     When using the presentation, use the Socratic method to ask students increasingly more complex questions in order to help them understand not just the English language but also the story.  I did use translations for a couple of words in the story that I wasn't sure how to convey the meaning with otherwise, which I normally avoid as much as possible.  There is a quick explanation of this in a sidebar below.  

     This lesson worked very well for the class I used it with; I had a lot of student participation and voluntary speaking with it.  When I use it next time, I will alter it to follow the TPRS Circling technique better.  It is definitely a work in progress and can be improved, but I'm happy with it so far.  (That being said, suggestions are welcome either in the comments below or by emailing me at Dr.Jeramee at gmail dot com).  

***** Sidebar on Socratic Questioning (skip if you are already familiar with this.)*****

     If your not familiar with it, begin with an end goal, perhaps the sentence: "The ninja attacks with a sword," (from slide 5.)  The final question would be something like "what is happening here?", but, to get there, students will often need a little help.  First, ask "Who?" or "Who is attacking?"  The student answers "ninja."

     Next, follow up with "What is the ninja doing?" or gap-fill with "The ninja . . . ?" by allowing the voice to trail off and indicate a question.  (Use body language gestures to help students understand that you want them to continue the sentence.)  Or, you can ask an either-or, like "Is the ninja eating or attacking?"

     Then, we ask a question to help the student finish the sentence.  Once the student can put subject, verb, & object together, then we can finish with "What is happening here?"  The TPRS "Green Book" really helps to lay out how to do questioning like this easily.

*****End Sidebar*****

Notes:

Editing: I have a presentation link at the bottom set so that you can edit it in case you want to change the few non-English words to the native language where you teach. (Or if you want to add content slides and expand the lesson.)  If you want to edit, please click: File>Make a copy, and edit the copy.   That will give you a personal copy of the presentation to use.  It will also prevent your changes from being lost if someone else makes changes!

Presentation link to download:https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_4GOUtSNKmUQWNFxn68qhf-C0HLEyuzFZqs2bRsG2Ug/edit?usp=sharing

Technology: I have a remote presentation control with a laser pointer in it for presentations like this.  It allows me to do the presentation without being confined to a desk.  It cost about $20 USD and was worth every penny.  Another option is to have a student click through the slides for you when you snap your fingers.  If you are like me and don't like to sit while teaching, that works fine too.

Tech Note 2:  As ESL teachers, we cannot really communicate with the parents, unless we are fluent in the learner's native language.  With a song, you can take a video of the students singing and post it to YouTube for the parents to see.  This is a way for us to communicate to the parents that we are working to give our students quality learning experiences.  Most kids have access to the internet at least through a smartphone.  They also seem pretty eager to show their parents the video of them singing in English.  Also, department heads like this because it shows that we are really trying to be great teachers for our students.

   At my school last year, I had Google Classroom.  All Google applications are connected through a Gmail account.  Last year, I posted the song videos to the YouTube account that I got through the school Gmail that they set up for me.  (If you don't have that, then I would take 3 minutes and make a new Gmail account just for teaching use.)

    I tell the students to show their parents the video.  (You could make it an easy-points homework assignment by having parents sign a paper saying that they saw it if you can get that translated.)  At the next class, I ask students if they showed their parents and what their parents thought.  The responses have been very positive.

Socratic Method/TPRS: This is a TPRS-inspired lesson.  I highly recommend reading Fluency Through TPRS (available through the link) if you'd like to improve your ESL teaching skills.  It is a combination of every effective teaching skill I accidentally stumbled upon in my first few years teaching plus a few others, and it is all combined into a comprehensible teaching system.

    According to the work of Dr. Stephen Krashen, listening to comprehensible input is necessary for language acquisition.  Let them hear understandable language first, and the speaking will come more easily and naturally.  TPRS takes these findings and applies it in a way that really helps students learn the language.

    TPRS means Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling.  TPRS is normally done through simple stories.  In this lesson, I am adapting the great teaching skills from TPRS to a song.  I'm no TPRS expert, so I will humbly call this lesson TPRS-Inspired.

    In these TPRS-Inspired lessons, I ask simple questions, have the students respond with a word or two, and then repeat their answer in a full sentence for them to hear.  (E.g.: Is the star big or little?  Students respond "little."  I repeat the answer with a full sentence, "Yes, the star is little.")  Students with higher skill levels will, of course, answer more completely or with full sentences.  There is a method for questioning and answer repetition that is part of TPRS teaching that works great for helping students learn.