Title: With an adjective it’s all plain as day

Lesson plan elaborated by: Katarzyna Maciejak

Topic:

With an adjective it’s all plain as day.

Target group

6th‑grade students of an eight‑year elementary school.

Core curriculum

II. Language skills.

2. Language differentiation. Student:

2) uses the official and unofficial variation of Polish;

3) uses a style appropriate to the communication situation;

7) uses a style appropriate to the intended purpose of communication;

8) distinguishes synonyms, antonyms, understands their function in the text and uses them in his own statements.

III. Creating expressions.

1. Elements of rhetoric. Student:

3) creates logical, semantically complete and structured statement, using composition and layout adequate to the given genre, understands the role of paragraphs in creating consistent statement;

5) knows the rules of creating paragraphs;

2. Speaking and writing. Student:

1) creates coherent statements in the following categories of literary composition: description;

9) uses the language skills in created statements.

IV. Self‑education. Student:

2) perfects different forms of writing down the gained information;

3) uses the information from different sources, gathers and selects information;

5) uses the Polish language dictionaries, both general and specific and the dictionary of literary terms;

9) develops the ability to effectively use the informational technology and the Internet resources and uses these skills to present his own interests.

The general aim of education

The students revise and consolidate the information about adjectives, including gradation.

Key competences

• communication in mother tongue;

• communication in foreign languages;

• consciousness and cultural expression;

• ability to learn;

Operational objectives

Student:

• knows what questions does the adjective answer;

• recognises adjectives in the text and explains their functions;

• knows the ways of grading adjectives and uses them correctly;

• uses adjectives to describe people and objects;

• explains the meaning of the selected proverbs.

Methods/techniques

• problematic: conversation;

• practical: subject exercises;

• programmed: using the computer, using the e‑textbook.

Forms of work

• uniform individual activity;

• work in pairs;

• collective activity;

Lesson plan overview (Process)

Introduction

1. The teacher determines the purpose of the class: the students will revise the information about adjectives, especially gradation, and use this knowledge to describe people and objects.

2. The teacher encourages students to do the ex. No. 1, in which they have to describe the people depicted in the pictures using as many adjectives as possible. Students together with the teacher write on the board adjectives, describing people from the photos. They remind themselves what questions the adjective answers to and talk about its functions in the text.

Realization

1. The teacher invites students to play in pairs. Students write in the notebook or on a piece of paper vertically the name of a friend or colleague from the bench. Each letter is the beginning of an adjective defining a character trait, e.g.

A – ambitious (ambitna)

N – nervous (nerwowa)

I – ironic (ironiczna)

A – assertive (asertywna).

During play, students can use Polish‑English and English‑Polish dictionaries. If it is difficult to invent features for a given letter, they can be arranged in the form of a crossword (no questions asked).

2. The students do the exercise number 2, they use the drawing program, or they draw in their notebook, a strange object or an unusual figure, then describe this drawing to their colleagues, but they cannot use the adjectives. The students compare their drawings and think about how did the lack of adjectives influence the reproduction. The teacher summarises this exercise by asking if it was easy to imagine the objects and figures on the basis of the description without adjectives and emphasise their role in the oral expressions, especially in the descriptions, characteristic and the story with the elements of descriptions.

3. The interactive ex. No. 2 – students complete the note about the adjective. After checking the class activities, the teacher draws the students' attention to the information in the abstract summarizing the most important facts about the adjective.

4. The teacher starts the second part of the lesson and discusses with the students the gradation of adjectives in such a way that the students themselves give the examples proving their knowledge. The discussion may be started by giving some examples of the sentences with the comparative and superlative form of adjectives and asking questions about these forms. The teacher asks about the effect that is achieved by the use of the adjectives in the comparative and superlative form (how a given feature is intensified). The students remind themselves how the adjectives are graded.

5. The students do the interactive exercise number 3, in which they practice the gradation (filling up the chart with the comparative and superlative forms of the adjectives: fat, bad, full, sick, poor, young).

6. The teacher together with the students analyse the information in the abstract about adjectives gradation.

7. The students do the interactive exercise number 4 in which they have to complete the proverbs with the relevant adjectives.

• Every cloud has a silver lining.

• A bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush.

• A lie has short legs.

• Hold a true friend with both your hands.

• Old love never dies.

• The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

• A word is enough to the wise.

• Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes.

• It's easy to be wise after the event.

The teacher discusses the meaning of the proverbs and explains those that were unknown to the students.

Summary

Students in pairs summarise the classes: one student asks a question about the material being developed in the lesson, the other responds and then they change the roles. Sample questions:

• What questions does the adjective match?

• What is the adjective declension?

• Why do we use adjectives?

• What are the types of adjectival grading?

• Which adjectives grade irregularly?

Homework

Find eight proverbs containing adjectives (other than these in the abstract) and explain their meaning.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

With an adjective it’s all plain as day

Read the adjectives that you used to describe the people. What questions does this part of speech answer? When do we use adjectives? What do they allow us to do?

An adjective adapts its form to the noun it describes, and just like the noun it declines according to case and number. Moreover, an adjective declines according to gender.

As you already know, adjectives are gradable – this feature lets us signalise the intensity of a particular feature. Both in Polish and in the English language there are three kinds of possible comparisons: equal, comparative and superlative. Do you remember what are the rules for adjectives comparison in Polish? How do we call the particular ways of making comparisons?

Remember! We can compare adjectives:

• regularly: equal: – old, comparative – older, superlative – the oldest;

• irregularly (the stem is changed): equal – good, comparative – better, superlative – the best;

• descriptively: equal – salty, comparative – more salty, superlative – the most salty.

Do you understand the meaning of the given proverbs? Did you know all of them before?