Welcome
to UNIT 15.0
PREVIOUSLY: In Unit 14.0, we covered the following sub
topics: "Describing physical
appearance" in Form One; "Talking about
games" in Form
Two; "Writing letters to the
editor" in Form
Three; and "Writing descriptive
compositions/essays" in Form Four.
IN
THIS UNIT 15.0, the following sub topics will be discussed: "Describing character" in
Form One; "Talking about marriages" in Form Two; "Writing business transaction
letters" in Form Three;
and "Writing
argumentative compositions/essays" in Form Four.
In
this Unit 15.1, we will discuss how to teach the sub topic “Describing character” in
Form One.
TOPIC’S
INFORMATION
Main Topic: TALKING ABOUT ONE'S FAMILY
Sub Topic: Describing character
Periods per sub topic: 8
Class: Form One.
DESCRIPTION
OF THE SUB TOPIC
We always ask this question: "How does she behave?" Or How does Juma behave?". Is he arrogant? Is he polite? Or Is he
charming? Is he kind? Is he a bad person? All these questions
and others are asked in order to understand the character of someone.
Each part in this sub topic
has its own 8 periods, hence making the total of 16 periods for the whole sub
topic.
Part Two: Describing people's character.
(To Check Part 1, Click Describing Character Part 1 )
SPECIFIC
OBJECTIVE OF THE LESSON
The student should be able to
describe people's character. The student should know how to describe other
people's characters.
- TEACHER’S PREPARATION STAGE
This stage is about
the preparation of the teacher before undertaking the lessons of the particular
sub topic. These are all activities, procedures, materials, teaching aids, and
games prepared by the teacher for teaching a sub topic:
- Putting heads together: Introducing
the topic/lesson properly. Organising how students will be able to get to
know what is the topic/lesson about. It is where teacher makes sure that
students are going to be in his/her train. It includes brainstorming and
familiarisation of the topic/lesson with the students.
This makes students
stay together with the teacher. It is at this stage students can understand
what is going to be discussed in the particular topic.
In this sub topic/lesson, in this stage, the teacher
will guide students to brainstorm on describing people's characters. By
introducing students to this topic, teacher will help students to introduce
others.
- Preparation of Materials. A teacher has
to decide on the teaching/learning materials he/she is going to use.
In this sub topic/lesson, the teacher will use as
appropriate texts as possible. The content of these texts should include the
vivid descriptions of people's characters.
For example:
Mzee Juma is a good person. He is kind. He likes to
treat others fairly and kindly. That old man is wise too. He is also a generous
old man. He respects other people's decisions. He is a kind-hearted person.
- Target
Practice. Show or Guide students to the practice of the functions of the sub
topic. A teacher has to show or guide students to the target practice of
the grammatical functions of the sub topic.
In
this sub topic/lesson, the teacher will guide students to the discussion of
adjectives and some nouns that show someone's character. The teacher can use
the common adjectives like: polite, obedient, arrogant, generous, mean,
disrespectful, kind, wise, troublesome, quarrelsome, angry, etc. Some sentence
examples are:
- She's a kind-hearted person.
- Asha is generous.
- My uncle us wise.
- He is the kind-hearted person.
- My grandfather is the wise old man
- She is a kind-hearted girl
- She/he is a rude girl/boy.
Note. Use of third personal pronouns and names
of people.
- Context-Based Practice. A teacher
leads students to the discussion on how the target grammatical functions practised
earlier can be applied or integrated into the contexts and situations. The
students are guided by the teacher to apply the learnt skills in relevant
contexts and situations like school and library.
In this sub topic/lesson, the teacher guides students
to express themselves at school, home, and other social settings. He/she should
advise students to have good characters or manners at any place and time. The
teacher should also encourage students to appropriately express other people's
characters.
- Vocabulary Building Practice. At this
time, teacher discusses with the students on the vocabularies and phrases
to apply in the already mentioned contexts and situations.
In this sub topic/lesson, various vocabularies can be
applied, but most of them are adjectives that show someone's character or
behaviour. These adjectives are like: cruel, rude, greedy, rough, good hearted,
careless, generous, gentle, sincere, etc.
- TEACHING AND LEARNING
PROCEDURES, ACTIVITIES AND GAMES
Guide the students
to the full sub topic/lesson procedures, activities and games for better
understanding of the sub topic by following these activities:
Activity One: Brainstorming. The teacher and students brainstorm about the sub
topic/lesson through oral questions with answers, pair works, and group
discussions of all important concepts to get students on track.
Character can be defined as
characteristics or qualities that define the person. For example,
characteristics like kindness, generosity, cruelty, and other features can be
used to tell the kind or quality of a person. If a person is kind, people will
say he/she has good or kind character.
Also the term Character means an imaginary person
represented in a fiction literary work. There are characters in every story we
read. These are called characters because they represent various
characteristics of people we live with our societies. For example, there can be
a thief in the story. We call that character as the person who has bad
character.
Thus, a character
is either the quality of a person, an imaginary person in a literary work, or
is an actor's portrayal of someone in a literary work like story, or play. Even
in our daily lives, people show various characters, bad or good.
Activity Two: Teacher’s Demonstration. Here there will be teacher's application
of his/models or examples so as to bring the topic/lesson and the students into
the real or common sense of the topic/lesson.
In this activity, the
teacher will guide students on how to describe people's characters. Here the
teacher will use third personal pronouns and appropriate terms to describe
other people's characters.
After describing
himself/herself, the teacher will provide students with some texts that
describe people's characters. These texts should match the level of understanding
of the students.
Afterwards,
students have to go through texts with descriptions of people's character.
Teacher guides students to read and identify any clues that show description of
someone's character.
Sample Texts
Here the teacher
can demonstrate more materials to students by giving them more sample texts on
people expressing their characters, that is, their behaviours and their other
personalities.
Text 1
Busara is a Form I student. He is a good student. His fellow
school mates like him very much. He is generous. He likes to share things and
food with others. He apologises every time he thinks he has offended someone.
He respects his parents and other people who are older than him.
Text 2
Tatu is 14 years old girl. She's a Form I student. She dislikes
being offended. She can fight anyone who angers her. She does not like to share
her things. Some students say she is mean, and she does not want to share
things with lazy people. She thinks she's grown up, and she decides what she
should do. She does not respect everyone. She only respects her parents.
Activity Three: Students’ Demonstration. Showing students
how models like that of a teacher can be applied by them. Here students need to
be guided on how to use given expressions, structures, vocabulary, and phrases
or similar ones.
In this activity, the teacher should guide
students to further practices on how to state the characters of people by
giving oral and written descriptions of members of their family and friends.
The teacher will
conduct a game to help students master their skill interactively. In this game,
one student says incomplete sentence or sentences about how someone behaves or
about how certain group of people behave. The teacher has to guide students and
ask them to be in pairs or group. It's good to be in pairs.
In each pair, the
first student says incomplete sentence about someone's behaviour and the second
student has to complete the sentence. For example; in the pair of Juma and John
below:
Juma: Most old men have ....... behaviour.
John: Wise.
Juma: She's ........ than you.
John: wiser'.
Juma: Asha obeys older people. She's......... person.
John: Obedient or polite
After some
sentences, John can start mentioning the incomplete sentences and Juma
completes them. In this game, a student will not only understand how to
describe how he/she looks like but also how to describe how others look like.
Activity Four: Taking/leading students to
the real situations or contexts where they can apply what they have mastered.
Here speaking, reading or writing activities are involved.
Activity Five: Winding up the topic/lesson.
Here teachers summarise the topic/lesson by emphasizing the importance of the
sub topic/lesson and suggesting other related aspects of the sub topic/lesson.
Additional Activity: As a teacher, what other
activity can be applied in this sub topic/lesson? You can always drop your
alternative activity or activities to this article so as to improve teaching
and learning of O Level English (OLE).
GRAMMAR PRACTICE:
In order to
incorporate this sub topic/lesson to the good structural and grammatical
patters, the teacher is advised to use various pictures, picture prompts and cartoons
to describe various characters of people.
The teacher should
also guide students or ask students to make a list of adjectives that express people's
characters.
REFLECTION
The teacher guide
students to the discussion of what happens when they try to show others how
they behave. Students should think of such situations and respond. These are
the common responses when someone wants to justify himself or herself in front
of others. Ask them how they respond when someone accuses them with these
accusations:
- You are a bad person
- You've bad behaviour
- You're mean
- You're arrogant
- You're selfish
Obviously, everyone
responds positively to such accusations, and by responding to them someone is
trying to express or justify his/her character to the people.
The teacher can
guide students to express or respond to the accusations that are directed to
others, for example:
- She is not polite.
- Is she arrogant?
- Are they generous?
- Is Juma a cruel person?
- Is your father the kind-hearted person?
ASSESSMENT
The teacher should
use relevant assessment tools like oral questions, drills, games, exercises,
pair works, group works, and assignments so that to check if a student is able
to describe people's character.
Assessment #01: Group work.
Ask students to
form groups and ask them to write any description of any famous person they
know. These descriptions should be based on the characters and appearance of
the particular person. Later, they should present their description in front of
class.
Assessment #02: Pair work.
Ask students to be
in pairs. Then ask each member of the pair to describe the characters he/she
thinks his/her compatriot has. After oral speaking, each one should write and
present what he/she has written to the class.
Assessment #03: Individual work.
Here the teacher
has to give students various individual exercises so as to assess their
understanding of the sub topic/lesson. These tasks may be based on the
following areas:
Question 1: To choose the correct words in the brackets.
Musa always fights
with other students. He is ________( quarrelsome/criminal)
My uncle beats me
with big sticks. He is _________ (kind/cruel)
The students
disobeyed their teacher. They are ________ (disobedient/polite)
Question 2: Match the following items.
LIST
A
|
LIST
B
|
(i)
She respects adult
(ii)
She gives things to the need
(iii)
John is not afraid of any danger
|
|
Assessment #04: Sentence expansion game
In this game the
teacher gives students a short description of someone. For example, “She is
generous”. Then students take turns to make sentence longer and longer (or add
other related sentences) until someone makes a mistake or gives up.
Note: You can give students more individual works,
pair works, and group works to facilitate their interaction and understanding
of the sub topic or lesson. As English language teacher you have to give
students more works to do. Because language is meant to be largely spoken and
written, the teacher should rely on written exercises and notes. Instead
students have to learn English language by vigorously exercising individually,
in pairs, and in groups.
SUMMARY/CONCLUSION
The teacher
concludes the sub topic/lesson by emphasising main points. The teacher should
not only teach students how to express their characters by themselves, but also
to encourage them to have good characters in their life. The teacher should ask
and encourage students to have good morals and manners which lead to good
characters.
NOTE: These stages explained above are not
necessarily covered in a single lesson of single or double period. Remember
that this is the guide for teaching the whole sub topic which has periods
ranging from 6 to 20. So, the teacher's task is to divide these stages
according to the total number of periods for a particular sub topic.
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WHAT IS YOUR
OPINION?
This article is
about how to study and teach "Describing
character" in Form One. As a student or teacher, what is your opinion
on how to study and teach this sub topic/lesson?
Your opinion is
worth and I believe that it can make these materials better for our own
consumption.
You are Welcome!
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