Abstract

This instructional design is concerned with Story time in Unit 3, 5A, Our animal friends, based on up-down reading teaching, the student-centered idea, The National Curriculum Standards for primary school and constructivist theory. It can facilitate the understanding of the story, improve students’ confidence and raise interests and offer some references for reading teaching in primary school. This design is composed of three parts: pre-design analysis of its major elements, design of teaching process and post-design reflections. Pre-design includes analysis of learners, teaching contents, teaching objectives, key points and difficult points. In terms of learners, they come from a rural school and are still interested in learning English. The author chooses Our animal friends as teaching contents to design which can arise students’ interests. In terms of teaching objectives, language knowledge, language skills, affective factors and learning strategies are included in this instructional design. After this class, students should be able to grasp new words and sentence structures; Improve listening, speaking, reading and writing skills; Cooperate with others; Develop the consciousness that animals are our friends. The key points are grasping new words and sentences and understanding the meaning of the story. The difficult point is how to describe my animal friends.

In order to realize these teaching objectives as well as break through key points and difficult points. The instructional design consists of three stages: pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. The first stage involves “Play a song”, “Lead-in” and “Study new words and brainstorm”, which does a foundation for the following study. The second stage involves “Predict the story”, “Match and say” and “Read and choose”, which helps students understand the meaning of the story. The third stage involves “Read aloud”, “Think and write”, “Describe my animal friends” and “Enjoy pictures”, which aims to consolidate the new knowledge for students.  

The reflections on the instructional design involve reflections on teaching objectives, reflections on teaching process and the revised instructional design based on reflections. Generally speaking, the teaching objectives are achieved but the cultivation of autonomous learning ability is neglected. In terms of design of teaching process, the design as a whole is successful except for some problems such as inadequate time for all teaching activities and a bit difficulty in doing brainstorming. Based on the reflections mentioned above, three revisions are made as follows. Firstly, “Play a song” is left and “Think and write” is removed to be homework; Secondly, students need to collect words about animals’ body parts before class; Thirdly, change “Read and choose” to cultivate autonomous learning ability.

Key words: up-down reading teaching; instructional design; teaching reflection; primary-school English

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

 1.1 General description of the instructional design-1

 1.2 Motivation for the instructional design-2

 1.3 Significance of the instructional design-3

 1.4 Overall structure of the thesis-4

2 Literature Review-4

 2.1 Key terms in this instructional design-4

   2.1.1 Up-down reading teaching-5

   2.1.2 Instructional design-5

 2.2 Theoretical foundations of instructional design-6

   2.2.1 The student-centered idea-6

   2.2.2 English curriculum standards for primary school-6

   2.2.3 Constructivist theory-8

 2.3 Related studies on instructional design of reading teaching-8

   2.3.1 Related studies on reading teaching-8

   2.3.2 Related studies on instructional design of primary-school English story-9

3 Analyses of Major Elements in the Instructional Design-10

 3.1 Analysis of learners-10

 3.2 Analysis of teaching contents in terms of selection-11

 3.3 Analysis of teaching objectives-12

   3.3.1 Teaching objectives in terms of language skills-12

   3.3.2 Teaching objectives in terms of language knowledge-13

   3.3.3 Teaching objectives in terms of learning strategies-13

   3.3.4 Analysis of teaching objectives in terms of affective factors-13

 3.4 Analysis of teaching contents in terms of key points and difficult points-14

   3.4.1 Teaching contents in terms of key points-14

   3.4.2 Teaching contents in terms of difficult points-14

4 Design of Teaching Process-15

 4.1 Pre-reading stage based on Up-down Reading Teaching-15

 4.2 While-reading stage based on Up-down Reading Teaching-16

 4.3 Post-reading stage based on Up-down Reading Teaching-17

5 Reflection on the Instructional Design-18

 5.1 Reflection on teaching objectives-18

   5.1.1 Teaching objectives in terms of language skills-18

   5.1.2 Teaching objectives in terms of language knowledge-19

   5.1.3 Teaching objectives in terms of learning strategies-19

   5.1.4 Teaching objectives in terms of affective factors-19

 5.2 Reflections on the teaching process-20

 5.3 Revised instructional design based on the reflections-20

References-22

Appendix I-23

Appendix II-27