| Topic | Limericks/Stress and Rhythm | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subject Area | Practical Language | |||
| Audience/Grade Level | Upper Intermediate and above university students | |||
| Purpose | To try to familiarize students with stress and rhythm in English by using limericks and meter in poetry | |||
| Objectives | Students will be able to identify stressed syllables. Students will be able to create their own limericks. | |||
| Learning Element | Activity Description | Method Used | Web Resources | |
| Frame | Clear, Measurable Objectives | Start by stating the objectives to students in a clear way - trying to work with stress and rhythm in English by identifying it in poetry. | Present | |
| Motivation | Ask students to look at the first 10 poems with pictures and work together to identify similar characteristics between the poems. The pictures and nonsense rhymes serve to capture interest. | Present, Collaborative | http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/BoN/bon010.html | |
| Shown Connections to Previously Learned Material | Elicit from students structures of poems that they have studied in Introduction to Literature class. Focus of the differences between meter in Czech poems and English poems (e.g., based on syllables and stress. | Active Learning, Guide | ||
| Elicit from students known rhymes. Focus on problematic sounds (e.g., ones that sound the same if read in a Czech way, but not in English). | Active Learning, Guide | |||
| Shown Connections to Students' Lives | Emphasize the use of stress and rhythm in English speach. Focus on reading poems out loud and over-stressing the stressed syllables to show how they appear. | Present, Guide | ||
| Inform | Content Presented in a Clear, Structured Manner | After students have come up with their ideas of what makes the poems similar, ask them to share it as a class. Together come up with a list of what makes a limerick a limerick. | Active Learning, Collaborative | |
| After students have an understanding of the rules that go into limericks, have them visit the website to see how different words can be replaced for other phrases. They then share their ideas of what makes the phrases the same. | Active Learning, Collaborative | http://www.learner.org/teacherslab/math/patterns/limerick/limerick_acttxt.html | ||
| Clear Demonstrations/Modelling | Ask students to browse through websites to find their favorite limericks, which they will then share with the rest of the class. | Guide, Present | http://www.math.fsu.edu/~mesterto/Unscramble/limericks.html | |
| Have students visit the section of the website called Scrambled Limericks and put the limericks into the proper order | Guide | http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_lesson20.htm | ||
| Explore | Guide the Students | Together as a class try to use the elicited rhyming words to form a limerick. | Guide, Collaborative | |
| Inform | Review What Was Learned | Remind students of the important parts of limericks - stress, rhythm, syllables. | Present | |
| Try | Allow Students to Perform Independently | For homework (or if time in class), assign each student to create their own limericks. | Problem Based, Active Learning | |