I. Getting ready to teach Lesson 7 A. General topic of the lesson: Planning a birthday party celebration B.

General goal of this lesson: Ss will familiarize with birthday party customs and party planning. C. Learning outcomes: 1. Content based objectives: Ss will be able to a) name three elements of an invitation (ex: host, address, special instructions), and b) identify the season and month they were born in 2. Linguistic objectives: Ss will be able to a) create a checklist, and b) write a simple invitation D. Vocabulary: birthday, joint, seasons E. Materials needed: whiteboard & markers, writing paper & pens & worksheets F. No formal assessment of this material is planned at this time II. Teaching the lesson Activity 1: Warm up: Introduction to birthdays (10 mins) 1. Tell the Ss that today is my birthday 11/13 2. Explain birthday (anniversary of ones own birth) 3. Tell how Andys birthday is 11/12, so we have a joint birthday party 4. Introduce invitations as a way of sending information about a party Activity 2: Birthday invitations (30 mins) 1. Distribute Lisas invitation 2. Read aloud & explain RSVP (rpondez, s'il vous plait) 3. Distribute Martins invitation 4. Read aloud, review briefly 5. Distribute Birthday invitations worksheet 6. Supervise as Ss complete the sheet 7. Nominate Ss for answers and review Activity 3: Birthday party checklist (30 mins) 1. Distribute Birthday party planning list worksheet 2. Read aloud 3. Explain each of the categories; emphasize hosts, rain plan and set-up 4. Supervise as Ss plan their own parties & make invitations 5. Listen as Ss share their party ideas with the class (Ss write plan on the board) 6. Give Ss a 5 minute break Activity 4: When were we born? (30 mins)

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Distribute the Seasons for birthdays worksheet Lead Ss in pronunciation practice with the seasons/months names Instruct Ss to write down their own birthdays Supervise as Ss interview one another Tally the seasons to find the most common

Activity 5: Closing (NMT 10 mins) 1. Sing Happy Birthday 2. Review take-aways from this lesson 3. Ask for final Qs and comments III. Reflection 5 things that went well:

Birthdays is a great topic for language learning because it reaches across all cultures. Though students originate from a variety of places and celebrate birthdays differently, they still have a concept of getting older or growing up. All of them had experiences with their own birthdays and were excited to talk about them during this class period. The materials for this class were not authentic, but they were attractive and real enough to be given as invitations. They were simple (with relevant pictures) and contained common invitation information. During the speaking section, the students were not intimidated to speak to each because they were given a guide question: When is your birthday? They perfected using this question because they repeated it to a variety of classmates. The question had an expected answer (month and day), so the format was also comfortable for them. Even the lower level students could participate in this activity with ease. The party planning activity allowed the students to use their imaginations and familiarized them with a checklist. At the conclusion of the activity, a few students gave brief presentations about their planned parties. These mini-presentations allowed students to speak in

front of their peers, which served as a great source of pride for them. The listeners were also exposed to a voice besides the teachers.

5 things I can improve upon: At the beginning of this class, I attempted to align with the students by telling two funny stories. There were three main problems with this though. 1) The stories didnt relate to the lesson topic of the day. Therefore, the stories may have given the students minor listening practice, but they didnt serve as a warm-up for birthdays. 2) The stories didnt cover high frequency or target vocabulary for the day. The words I wrote on the board were too advanced/irrelevant for much for the class, like allergic and rear-ended. 3) The stories took too long to finish. I told the stories for about 12:00 at the beginning of the class and then spent another 2-3 minutes setting up the first activity. Therefore, the real language learning didnt begin until 10:15am. This is way too late. In the future, I will tailor my stories to the class topic and enlist volunteers to help distribute the materials. My mentor teacher asked if he could help me, but I refused since there were only about three rows left to receive their materials. However, I should have said yes in order to save even a little time. While I am storytelling/making a teaching point, I interject the words okay and right entirely too much. When using these words, I am attempting to indirectly tell the students that what I am saying is right or that I want them to listen. However, I use these words with abundance and despite no reaction from the students. The bottom line is that I need to cease my usage of these words and instead let the answers/questions of the students do the confirmation for me instead. Many of the students had questions about the Birthday invitations handout. In the future, perhaps I can review all of the questions beforehand to ensure the students know the meaning

and how to answer. This will save the volunteers from making repetitive explanations to multiple students. Maybe when I realized this was a problem during the activity I should have stopped the class temporarily. Finally, I should change the Birthday invitations handout so the Lisa and Martin sides dont look exactly the same. The same graphic and question number/length is on both sides, but the Martin side is indeed different than Lisa. I dont think anyone knows this but me though since we didnt review Martins side. I will alter these materials in the future so there is less confusion about which side were on and so the students are more motivated to proceed to a new material.