Teaching Plan for Marco Polo

The first period

Zhang Hong

Tongcheng High School

• Teaching Objectives:

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

1. Work out the meaning of new words in context and use them properly in sentences.

2. Retell the life of Marco Polo with key words.

3.Comment on Marco Polo’s historical achievement and the lessons learned from his   adventure.

• Teaching important and difficult points:

1. How to help students practice their skimming and scanning skills in an effective way.

2. How to encourage students to express themselves bravely in class.

3. How to cultivate students’ ability to view the historic events logically and critically.

• Teaching Methods: Task-based approach, cooperative approach, whole language approach

• Teaching Aids: Multimedia, students’ worksheet, blackboard

• Teaching Procedures:

Step I. Lead-in　

Play a video clip about Marco Polo and thus naturally lead to the character of today's lesson.

Step II. Brainstorm

1. Describe the main character in the text briefly and ask students to guess who he is.

2. Ask students to brainstorm and share what they already know about Marco Polo.  

Step III. Pre-reading: prediction　

Ask students to predict the type of writing and its writing order by the title.  

Step IV. While-reading

1. Ask students to read the article silently for the first time and answer questions in Ex.2.  

2. Check the answers by asking students to answer questions with a complete sentence.

3. Raise one extra question and then ask students to answer it by using a sentence from the text. After that,  let the student explain the new phrase in the answer.

4. Do Ex. 3 & 4. (vocabulary)

5. Read the article once again and complete the outline of the article by filling in key words.

6. Ask students to retell the life of Marco Polo with the help of the outline. 

Step V. Post-reading

1. Students think and express their opinions about Marco Polo’s good qualities and contributions to the world.                          

2. Compare the influence of Zheng He with that of Marco Polo on China and the western world and think about the lessons we can learn from it .

• Homework

1.  Write down what they have discussed in class according to their notes.

2.  Preview the Grammar part on page 26.