LESSON PLAN AIMED AT TEACHING LISTENING

Introduction

This lesson plan concentrates on the knowledge and skills

of “listening” within the oral competence area of the
National Curriculum for English.

We have included this in our portfolio as it is the first

lesson plan about listening that we have made. And it has
been very instructive. We think this would fit perfectly in
year 3-4 and would be a perfect fit for the students because it is a very instructive
subject and it has a perfect balance of listening and doing activities. We think that this
lesson plan will work well, and that the duration of this course is fitting. But of course, it
would be interesting to try it out in practice to see if our estimation sticks.

The full extent of the lesson plan can be read down below:
Teaching subject: English as a foreign language.

Targeted learners: Year 3-4.

Theme: Stories /rhymes / accents.

Competence area: Oral communication.

Skills and knowledge Listening and understanding.

area:

Skills and knowledge Lytning

goals: Eleven kan forstå hovedindholdet I korte fortællinger / Eleven
har viden om støtte til lytteforståelse (Trin 1, fase 3)

Kommunikationsstrategier
Eleven kan anvende simple gættestrategier i forståelsen af
ukendt ordforråd / Eleven har viden om gættestrategier (Trin
1, fase 4)

Total duration: 135-180 minutes (3-4 lessons).

Materials and teacher Prior to this lesson, please ensure you:

preparation
- Copy and print out the needed pages from The
Gruffalo picture book for each student.
- Copy and print out The Gruffalo story/song for each
student.
- Ensure all the students have their paper and pencils
ready for the assignment.
- Ensure the classroom has internet access and
somewhere to show videos.
- Find the “read aloud” video of The Gruffalo by Alan
Mandel
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivAh8w5Cjg ).
- Bring picture flashcards for matching words in the
story.
Activities
Before ● Short talk about animals of the forest
listening write keywords on board.
● Short talk about animal features
(claws, horns, etc.).
● Short talk about rhymes.
● What is a Gruffalo? Predict what is the
story about?

While ● Listen to the story.

Listening ● Count rhymes.
● Students show picture flashcards
matching words in the story. Teacher
points to the matching picture on the
board as well.

After ● Talk about words the learners need to

listening understand in order to get the main
content of the Gruffalo-story.
● Talk about food references.
● Draw the Gruffalo and tell about it in
English.

Assessment of Observation. Evaluate/assess their understanding of the story

learning via. drawing and telling about the Gruffalo character.

Evaluation of teaching Two stars and a wish

Students mention 2 things they liked about the topic and 1
wish for “next time”.
The didactic rationale

According to Carol Read (Read, 2007) when you do a listening activity, it is often useful to
plan for the following three stages: before, while and after listening. The lesson begins with
an introduction to the topic ahead. The teacher presents the students with an object or
maybe a picture of something relating to the topic. According to British Council (n.d.) the use
of real objects in the classroom makes the learning experience more memorable for
learners. The use of objects could also help make the abstract concrete for learners. Lastly,
it creates the possibility to expand the learners’ vocabulary on the topic, which will help them
understand and complete the main activity later in the course.

Listening concentrates more on comprehension rather than producing language (Gibbons

pp. 183). Even though listening focuses more on comprehension it's still an active process.
The Listener is both trying to understand the sounds and fabricating meaning. Additionally,
searching for knowledge about the structure of the language in the brain (Gibbons pp. 184).
Gibbons mentions Nunan, D. 1990 that describes the listener as a meaning builder.
"listeners construct an interpretation of what they hear using not only the sounds of the
language, but also, just as in reading, their available schema and knowledge of the language
system" (Gibbons pp. 184).

The lead-in activity works as a pre-listening by a short talk about animals of the forest, and
what animals are there in the story. Thereafter talk short about what features the animals
have (claws, horns, etc.). Have a short talk about what rhymes are. Do the students know
what it is? The next lesson would be about what is the Gruffalo, what is this creature, what is
the story about?

During the lead-in activity, the teacher has multiple opportunities to assess the learners’
understanding of the skills and knowledge area. The lesson focuses on listening and
understanding what is in the story and what is being said in the story. The key goal is to
understand key points of the story (what the moral of the story is). Through the lead-in
activities you will also establish a reason and purpose for the students to listen to the story,
which will be the core activity (Read, C. (2007). Listening and reading. Speaking and
writing.).

The while-listening activity is to listen to the story. The students will note words they don’t
understand, and they might also count the rhymes in the text. During the listening exercise
the students will hold up picture flashcards matching words in the story. Meanwhile, the
teacher points to the right picture on the board for the class to see. The students do these
activities to develop listening sub-skills, in this case by listening to the story for global
understanding or gist (Read, C. (2007). Listening and reading. Speaking and writing.).

The learning goals of the core activity have been constructed around the communicative skill
listening which is at the very core of this lesson plan. The core activity is to help the students
learn how to listen and understand the content in the short story/ the knowledge of
understanding. The active listener needs strategies to understand the sounds, structure,
flow, etc. to construct meaning. The ministry of children and education presents a listening
strategy that includes a top-down and bottom-up effect. The Top-down effect involves
knowledge of the world around the listener, knowledge about conversations and situation
awareness. The Bottom-up effect involves knowledge about rhythm, words, phrases and
single words (Børne- og undervisningsministeriet, GSK Vejledning Engelsk 2020 pp. 17)
Listening strategies are used as scaffolding. Preparation and exercises before listening,
while listening, and after listening (Børne- og undervisningsministeriet, GSK Vejledning
Engelsk 2020 pp. 17).

According to the Linguist Stephen Krashen's input Hypothesis, students should engage with
language exercises just above their level, to be able to acquire language (Johnson, K.
(2017). An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching).
Learners stand in a cognitive gap between what they can do by themselves and what they
can do with help from a more skillful expert. Learners coordinate a task with an expert. The
expert assists the learner and thereby performance guidance so the learner can successfully
perform a task beyond their level. This phenomenon is called the zone of proximal
development by Lev Vygotsky (Gibbons. Scaffolding language - Scaffolding learning pp.
13-14). The teacher must continuously assess whether the learners are showing signs of
learning and understanding of the material. It is essential that the students can participate in
the classroom of what they get about the story and what they don’t get so they can be
guided and helped to understand what it is about. The material should not be too difficult nor
too easy for the learner.

The activity is wrapped up after they have listened to the story. They will talk about words the
students don’t understand and also talk about food references. The students will thereafter
draw the Gruffalo and tell about it in English. That means that you will have the students
report back in a speaking activity using at least some of the language the story contains
(Read, C. (2007). Listening and reading. Speaking and writing.).

References:

Bjerre og Ladegaard (2007). Intersprogets udvikling.

British Council (n.d.). TeachingEnglish Retrieved 6th April 2021 from:

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/realia-0

Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding language, scaffolding learning: teaching English

Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom (2nd edition).

Johnson, K. (2017). An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching.

Read, C. (2007). Listening and reading. Speaking and writing

Børne- og undervisningsministeriet. (2019). GSK Vejledning Engelsk.