Preparation for skills activities

PREPARATION FOR SKILLS ACTIVITIES
The text: “The best jobs in the world…probably”, Tim Falla and Paul Davies, Oxford University Press, 488 words.
Target students: 15 pre-intermediate school students.
Teaching context: a secondary school, a General English lesson, a classroom with sufficient amount of equipment, an exam preparation course.
Aim of the lesson:

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  Providing learners with new information about particular types of jobs through the text “The best jobs in the world… probably”;
  
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  Improving students’ reading comprehension skills;
  
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  Introducing job-related new vocabularies and teaching how to pronounce & use correctly.
  

Despite the fact that it is a reading lesson, different language skills as well as language systems except for reading are used during the class, as they help to have an engaging classroom environment along with successful progresses in terms of students’ understanding of the topic.
Activities:

1. 
   Guessing from Pictures & Speed chatting: a) The instructor demonstrates 3 pictures describing three different jobs (a film tagger (the 1^st picture), a duvet tester (the 2^nd picture), and a Lego sculptor (the third picture)) on the screen and asks the students to guess how they are connected to each other. This activity is organized with pair discussions, so the teacher asks the class to make two rows looking at each other and then, he/she needs to encourage the learners to share ideas. The students should be told that they have only one minute for this task. Once the one minute is up, one of the rows rotates, in this way each of them has a new partner. The teacher requires repeating the process several times. When everyone stops discussing, the teacher asks the learners to express their ideas and then, summarizes them. If there is any correct answer, the student who expressed it is politely congratulated.
   

b) This activity is very helpful to set a scene of the topic which will be learned in the class. Students will be able to understand what the main focus will be on and mentally get prepared for this process. This activity also enables learners to improve critical thinking skills, relying on the pictures and the elements described in them.

2.