Unit 4: Materials Assignment — Pro

forma for trainees’ use

Name of trainee: Sam Dyer

Course providing organisation: IPU NZ

Start and end dates of course: 7th February 13th March

Please complete the summary of class data table below, and all the other information related
to the rationale and evaluation sections. Please complete this information in the spaces
provided, ensuring that your responses are clearly separated from the rubric.
Please type your answers into the spaces. Clear and coherent notes (e.g. using bullet points) are
welcomed, but do not alter the rubric in any way.
The word count for the rationale and evaluation for the material is 400–500 words.

Number of learners: 11

Level of class: Pre elementary

Monolingual class (if so, please state first Palestinian Arabic, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, Thai,
language): Nepali, Columbian Spanish, Pashto, modern standard Arabic

Type of material: Listening activity consisting of a map and instructions and some tokens.

The students listen for instructions to follow along with to get to a secret
destination. After a while one group will give instructions while the others
follow.

Type of activity: Listening and speaking

Point in lesson when used, noting The activity was at the end of the practice stage following discussion on
preceding and subsequent activity:
directions that involved students walking in directions spoken by me and
before the production stage activity of a blindfolded instruction task.

Rationale and Evaluation

Please show your word count for the rationale and the evaluation, excluding the Trinity rubric. The word count for the rubric is 143
words.

Word count:520
 Rationale
What was the linguistic purpose of this material? What were the objectives for the learners’ language development?

The linguistic porpoise was to give the students a real-life example of places that they go to on a weekly
routine. All the students were relatively new to New Zealand and the city of Palmerston North because of
this I believe that giving instructions to their pairs would be very beneficial.

The objectives of the lesson were to give the students the required vocabulary and phrases to give and
take instructions to their pairs.

By the end of the lesson, students should have the ability to ask strangers for directions on how to get to
important places in Palmerston North. They will also be able to give out instructions if they are asked.

How did you think this material was appropriate to your students’ specific linguistic needs?
Why was it appropriate?

As most of the students in my class are refugees they are very new to Palmerston North and New
Zealand. It is important for them to be able to get to the places they would like to go to. After this lesson,
the students can not only ask questions about how to get to the places but also be able to give their
friends directions on how to get to the places they would like to go to.
After you had prepared the material and before the lesson, what difficulties did you anticipate for your learners? What solutions did
you identify for dealing with those difficulties?

I anticipated that students would not be able to understand the English words for left and right. As well as
continue straight and at the next road turn.

I also anticipated some trouble with the ideas of on the third left or continue straight.

I will explain to the students that you can make the letter L with your left hand to indicate left.

I will also use a lot of hand gestures when explaining these ideas.

It will also be important to go over all new ideas until students will be able to reproduce them.

Evaluation

Explain how you used the materials in the classroom effectively. What groupings did you use and why? How did the
materials fit within the wider context of the lesson?

I had printed out the same map for each of the students as well as having one on the whiteboard and one
on the TV just as a point of reference when explaining and showing examples.

I split the class into groups of 3 members each as I felt that if I pair the students together there would be a
mutual understanding as well as students will be able to talk and discuses mistakes that they may think
another learner made.

The materials fit in with the wider context of the lesson as it incorporates the directions learnt previously
into a real-life situation.

What reasons can you give for the success of your materials (or lack of)? How did you reach this conclusion?
 The material was successful as the students were able to produce and act on the exercise. All students by
the end of the exercise had given one lot of instructions themselves as well as completed the exercises
given by me and their pairs.

I felt this as they always seemed to be getting everything correct. They did still have fun and they were
also very good at giving their own examples.

How might the materials be improved for the same learners without changing the learning objectives, in terms of targeting the
linguistic need and in terms of design and presentation?

You could also add to the map a concept of speed and traffic lights to the map as other tokens. There is
also space to add new locations.

This could add to the lesson and introduce a larger challenge to the students who find the tasks easy.

There could be added street names to make the places easy to find on a street map for the students.