Abstract

The instructional design is about reading part School Life(the first period) in Unit 2, 8A of Fun With English from Yilin Press. The aim of the instructional design is to concern about the current English reading class and seek solutions for the traditional “one size fits all” teaching method. The topic of this design is school life which could encourage students to learn foreign school culture and pay attention to their own school life and help them learn language knowledge and love their own school life.

The instructional design is mainly made up of three parts: pre-design analysis, the design of teaching process and reflection of the design.

The pre-analysis consists of four sections: the analysis of teaching contents, learners, teaching objectives, teaching methods and learning methods. The teaching target of this design is grade eight students in middle school, and the teacher choose the stratified teaching method to help students learn the school life in British school and American school. As for the teaching objectives, by the end of this class, the students have to well understand the reading passage, improve their reading skills and learn about foreign school culture.

In order to achieve teaching objectives, the teaching process is divided into four parts: warming-up, pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. In the first part--warming-up, the teacher uses pictures to attract students’ attention and make a discussion about their familiar topic to lead them in the target topic--school life. As for the pre-reading part, a short video is shown to make students have a glimpse at the foreign school life and then students will have a prediction of reading passage which will arouse their interest. In the third part, the teacher will help students summarize the main idea of each part and present some detail questions for them to answer, which aims to make students learn school culture in British school and American school and involve all of students into the class. In the last part: post-reading, students will have a comparison between foreign school life and native school life in order to have a consolidation about what they have learned and make them focus on their own school life. As for the assignment, apart from compulsory homework, the students could choose an optional homework according to their interest.

Finally, the author has a reflection of the instructional design in terms of cultural awareness and teaching process. The design has achieved great success in terms of culture awareness in teaching objectives. However, the important language points hasn’t been focused on in the teaching process. Therefore, the explanations of significant words and expressions will be presented in the warming-up stage. What’s more, in the last stage, the students will have a brainstorming activity about their ideal school life after comparison in order to have a preparation for their homework.

    Key words: instructional design; stratified teaching method; English reading