Unit 2  farming

Period 1  Warming up, Pre-reading, Reading & Comprehending

Teaching Goals:

1. To help Ss to learn the importance of helping others and the ways to help others.

2. To help Ss to learn about the educational and living conditions of some developing countries and develop their awareness of helping those in need.

3. To teach how to use the new words and phrases in the text.

Teaching Procedures:

Step 1. Leading-in

1. Lead Ss to the content of this unit. Teacher may say, “We have all heard about Lei Feng, who was ready to help others and set us an example. We live our own lives. Everybody has his own work to do. Why must we help others?”

2. Get some Ss to present their opinions on the question above before the class.

Suggested Answer:

   Nobody can do everything alone, no matter how powerful he is. Nobody never meets with trouble, no matter how well he is going. So everybody needs others’ help. But we cannot always receive but never give. We must give in return for what we receive. We give help because we have been helped. Since we were born, we have received a lot from the society. So we should return it. We give help today, but we may need help tomorrow. Even if we may not see a person again, by helping him, we can let him know help is necessary and important for those who are in need. By helping each other, people can feel that life is full of warmth and friendliness and is worth living. In a word, to help others is to help oneself.

Step 2. Warming Up

1. Ask Ss to discuss the following question.

In what ways do we help the people around?

2. Ask Ss to work in groups of four and one of them to interview the other three. Tell him to ask the questions in Ex1 of Warming Up on P28. Then get one pair to act out their dialogues before the class.

3. Divide Ss into four groups and ask them to discuss the following question.

Can we call the person who helps others a “volunteer”?

Suggested Answer:

   When one of your parents or friends needs help, you may not be asked to help but you volunteer to help, we don’t say you are a volunteer. A volunteer is a person who helps others in or outside his community or in a foreign country.

Step 3. Pre-reading

 Purpose: To get Ss prepared for the reading text.

1.       Ask Ss to look at the pictures on P29～P30 and guess what the passage talks about.

2.       Ask Ss to describe the students and their classrooms in the pictures. After that, let Ss imagine their living conditions.

3. Lead Ss to the reading text. Teacher may say, “Today we are going to read a letter written by an Australian volunteer, Jo, who taught for two years in Papua New Guinea, a country to the south ofAustralia.”

Step 4. Skimming

   Purpose: To help Ss get the general idea of the letter.

1.       Ask Ss to listen to the tape and try to get the main idea of the text.

Suggested Answer:

In the letter, the writer wrote about the educational and living conditions in PNG and her experience of visiting a student’s village.

2.       Play the tape paragraph by paragraph and let Ss read after it. Then ask them to sum up the main idea of each paragraph with only one sentence.

Suggested Answer:

Para1: opening of the letter: the reason why Jo wrote the letter

Para.2: The school is simply built and far away from the students’ homes.

Para.3: The educational conditions are very poor.

Para.4: I visited a village of one of my student’ and received a warm welcome.

Para.5: I stayed with the student’s family and their huts were poorly equipped.

Para.6: I had a meal with the student’s family and they cooked in an unusual way.

Para.7: I returned from the visit and felt greatly rewarded.

Para8: the end of the letter

Step 5. Scanning

     Purpose: To help Ss get a deeper understanding of the text..

1. Ask Ss to find out the relationship of the people mentioned in the text. Teacher may say, “There are some persons mentioned in the text. Can you name them? Can you find out who they are?”

Suggested Answers:

Jo — the writer of the letter.

Rosemary — the person who Jo is writing to.

Tombe — one of the writer’s boy students, whose family Jo visited

Jenny — the writer’s fellow worker

Kiak — Tombe’s mother

Mukap — Tombe’s father

2. Ask Ss to read the text carefully and ask them the following questions. It is better to read them out to Ss than to present them on the blackboard. Encourage Ss to keep the eyes away from the books when they answer the questions.

(1)    What is the school like?

(2)    Is the writer popular with her students? How do you know?

(3)    What is the writer’s difficulty in teaching?

(4)    Why did the students jump out of the windows?

(5)    Why does the writer wonder if she is making any difference to her students’ lives?

(6)    Was the writer warmly welcomed by the villagers? How do you know?

(7)    Do Mukap and Kiak usually sleep in the same house?

(8)    Where did the writer and Jenny sleep that night?

(9)    Why did Tombe throw away the tin can?

Suggested Answers:

(1)    It is made of bamboo and the roofs are made of grass. It is from away from Ss’ homes.

(2)    Yes. When she gets to school, the students all say hello to her.

(3)    There is no electricity or water and they have no textbooks. There is no teaching equipment.

(4)    Because they had never seen such an accident and were frightened.

(5)    Because most of her students will go back to their villages to work in the field and she thought what they have learnt will be of no use.

(6)    Yes. Because Tmbe’s mother welcomed her by crying “ieee ieee” and the villager all shook hands with her warmly.

(7)    No. They sleep in their own huts.

(8)    They slept on a newly-made platform in Mukap’s hut.

(9)    Because they think throwing away the tin can is in fact throwing away evil spirits.

Step 6. Language point

1. Ask Ss to work in pairs and underline and translate the following phrases in the text.    

hear from, be dying to do sth., up to, adapt to, the other day, before I knew it, come across, make a difference to sb., get to know, shake hands with sb., stick out of, get through, a newly made platform, a couple of, build a fire, leave…to do sth., dry out, dry up, fall into bed

2. Lead Ss to deal with some more language points.

(1) be dying to do sth (line 2, para1): want very much to do sth, have a strong desire to do sth.

I am dying to know what has happened. 我迫切想知道发生了什么。

● 拓展be dying for sth：want sth very much

   I am dying for a glass of water. 我非常想来杯水喝。

(2) picture (line 3, para 1): imagine, form a picture of sb or sth in the mind

I can still picture the house I spent my happy childhood in. 我仍能回忆起那间房子，在那里我度过美好的童年。

Can you picture what it is like to live on a lonely island? 您能设想在孤岛上的生活是什么样吗？

(3) challenging (line 4, Para.3): difficult to deal with

I like to do challenging work. 我喜欢做有挑战性的工作。

To be a teacher is both challenging and rewarding. 教师这个职业既充满挑战也能带来成就感。

(4) the other day (line 5, Para.3): a few says ago, recently

I saw a person swimming in the river the other day. 那天我看见一个人在河里游泳。

(5) make a difference to  (line 10, Para.3): have an effect on, be important to

The rain didn’t make any difference to our football game. 那场雨没有影响到我们的足球赛。

Going to college made a big difference to my whole life. 考上大学对我的整个一生影响颇大。

(6) stick out (line 2, Para.5): push sth further out

Don’t stick your arm out of the car window. 不要把手伸出车窗。

She stuck out her tongue at me. 她向我吐舌头。

(7) a couple of (line 10, Para. 5): ① two; ② a few, a small number of

I saw a couple of them get out. 我看见他们俩出去了。

We went there a couple of years ago. 我几年前去过那。

(8) leave sb to do sth (line 4, Para.6): leave sb behind and make him/her do sth

All men have gone to town to make money, leaving the women to do the farm work. 男人都去城里挣钱了，把农活都留给女人去做。

(9) prepare sb. / sth. (the last paragraph.): get sb. / sth. ready

Mother is busy preparing dinner in the kitchen. 妈妈正在厨房里忙于准备饭菜。

The teacher stayed late to prepare lessons for the next day. 老师为备课，加班到很晚。

3. Get Ss to find the attributive clauses used in the text and translate them into Chinese. And then explain for Ss.

(1) When I reach the school grounds, there are lots of “good mornings” from the boys, many of whom have walked a long way. 当我到达学校时，许多男孩向我对我说“早安”。他们中有许多人是走了很远的路来上学的。

many of whom have walked a long way 是非限制性定语从句，起补充说明作用。

试对比：...from the boys. Many of them have walked a long way. （单句属于独立的句子，地位和前一个句子相同。）

(2) Sometimes I wonder how relevant chemistry is to the kids, most of whom will be going back to their villages after Year 8. 有时我很想知道化学与这些孩子有什么关系，因为他们中的大多数人在8年后都会返回他们的村子。

most of whom will be going back to their villages after Year 8. 是非限制性定语从句，处于次要地位，起补充说明作用。

(3) We walked for two and a half hours to get there—first up a mountain to a ridge from where we had fantastic views. 我们走了两个半小时才到那——先翻过一座山又过了一座桥，在那里我们看到了美丽的景色。

from where = from on the ridge，例如：

He hid himself behind the wall, from where he could watch the enemy. (where = behind the wall) 他藏在墙后面，在那他可以看见敌人。

Step 7. Homework

1. Ask Ss to read the text aloud.

2. Ask Ss to finish Ex1 and Ex3 of Comprehending on P31.

3. Ask Ex1 and Ex2 of Discovering useful words and expressions on P32.