Unit 2 Working the land

教 学 设 计

Warming up and reading

Teaching Aims

To help students develop their reading ability.

To help students learn about working the land.

Teaching Procedures

I. Warming up

Warming up by questioning

Hello, everyone. We shall read about man who works the land today. Have you ever grown any plants? If not, what kind of plant would you like to grow? How will you grow it?

(For reference: Mr. Li, I worked with my father in the rice field last year. We grow hybrid rice and use animal wastes to make the soil rich.)

Has anyone of you ever been to the countryside? What did you do there?

(For reference: I went to Chuankou the day before yesterday. It is a small mountain village 75 li north of Beijing. I went there to visit my uncle’s family. I like that small beautiful village very much. )

Who are from a farmer’s family? What do you know about farming?

(For reference: Mr. Li, Dou Jun and I are from a farmer’s family in our class. We grow wheat and raise pigs on our farms. And both of our family are going to expand the area of fields this year. )

Warming up seeing and listening

Boys and girls, I shall show you some photos of farming first. Look at this one. What are these people doing in the fields? Yes, it is spring and they are planting rice. Lots of people in the world live on rice. I think you like eating rice, too.

Planting rice

Here is another photo about farming. The man driving the tractor in the photo is plowing the land to prepare for the planting. He does not grow rice there. What kind of crop is he going to plant here?  

Plowing the land

This photo is interesting. The woman farmer from Tibet is harvesting her crops not in the open field but in a plastic house. For generations, the people in Tibet Autonomous Region, have farmed the land using traditional methods. But in recent years, things have begun to change. All the farmers admit the new ways are better.

Indoor harvesting

II. Pre-reading

Questioning and answering

Rice is main food in South China. What do you think would happen if tomorrow there was suddenly no rice to eat?

(For reference: Then the south people would have to change their eating habit. They could turn to potatoes, wheat flour, cow and sheep cheese, cabbage, onions and garlic for food. They are the bases of the traditional food in North China. )

If you had the chance to do one thing to help end hunger in the world, what would you do?

(For reference: I would try to end hunger by popularizing the advanced farmingtechniques. Modern techniques could be introduced to increase the rice output, and  expand the area of fields.)

Giving background information about Professor Yuan Longping

Have you ever heard of a man called Professor Yuan Longping? Would anyone of you tell the class something about him?

(For reference: Professor Yuan Longping is a Chinese agricultural scientist. Professor Yuan's breakthrough scientific achievement led to the world's first successful and widely grown hybrid rice varieties, revolutionizing rice cultivation in China and tripling production over a generation. His approach to rice breeding then spread internationally throughout Asia and to Africa and the Americas, providing food for tens of millions and leading to his becoming known as the "Father of Hybrid Rice."

III. Reading

Reading aloud to the recording

Comprehension—understanding what you are reading—is important. To read in thought groups is an easy, yet effective, way of improving reading comprehension. Now turn to page 10 and read aloud to the recording of the text A PIONEER FOR ALL PEOPLE. Pay attention to the thought groups in the sentences while listening and reading aloud.

Reading and underlining

Read the text again and underline all the collocations in the passage. You are asked to copy them to your notebook after class as homework.

Reading, identifying and summarizing

Attention, please! It is time to skim the text one more time and identify the topic sentence of each paragraph.

(Minutes later) Xue Hongmei, would you read to the class the four topic sentences you identified?

What about the main idea of the passage? Who will volunteer to give the class his summary of the main idea? Bai Jianfang, you’d like to say something? Go ahead!

Understanding difficult sentences

In groups of four, analyze the structure of the difficult sentences. If you have any problems which are too difficult for you to solve do not hesitate to put them to me.

Reading and transferring

In pairs, read the text, find information to complete the following form.  

IV. Closing down

Closing down by doing exercises

In the last five minutes let’s do the comprehension exercises on page 10. Check your answers against your neighbour’s when you have finished.

Closing down by having a dictation

To end the period you will take a dictation. It is about Yuan Longping, “Father of Super hybrid rice”.