Standards and backwards mapping

I am teaching English in Grade 2 of a primary school. I am going to choose Common Core State Standards. Here is the one I will use to develop the unit lesson plan:

         

Tell a story or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking audibly in coherent sentences.

As non-native speakers, my students are starters of English learning. Speaking and listening skills are the priority at this stage. Once they find they can use what they have learned to communicate with others, their confidence and interest can be built up easily.  The topic of this unit 5 is about holidays. Students will learn how to use the past tense to talk about their holidays. Every student experienced holidays in the past whether abroad or around the Country. It’s easy for them to find something in their daily life to connect with the topic of this unit. As well as this, it’s easy for them to understand the meaning and how to use the past tense. Therefore, this standard is the right one for this unit.

When students finish this unit, they are able to:

1)      Talk about their holidays with simple past tense.

2)      Make a simple conversations about each other’s holidays.

3)      How to use the past tense in a situation about themselves and other.

In order to meet this standard, here are the assessments and activities to each outcome:

1)      Talk about their holidays with simple past tense

Assessment: Students give presentations about their holidays with simple past tense.

Activity: Students need to send the teacher a travelling picture as homework. The teacher will present each student’s picture and invite each one of them to the front of the class to introduce their holiday with the simple past tense.

2)      Make a simple conversation about each other’s holidays.

Assessment: Ask and answer the questions about each other’s holidays.

Activity: The Teacher is to prepare random pictures with different places and transportation types. Next divide students into different pairs, let them choose the one they like and afterwards they are to have a similar conversation to that in the textbook.

3)      How to use the past tense

Assessment: a quiz for checking whether students understand how to change the verbs into simple past tense.

Unit 5 Simple Past Tense                               Name______________               Class________________                     1 go____________________                  2 is/am__________________                     3 are___________________                   4 do ____________________                     5 say___________________                   6 see___________________                     7 have/has______________                   8 swim__________________                     9 look__________________                   10 run__________________

Activity: Divide students into two teams. Let groups of students stand back to back. Tell students of one group to close their eyes. Then show different action verbs to each student of the other team. When the teacher says “One, two, three, go.”  Students who were shown the action verbs start to do the actions.  When the teacher says “stop”, these students stop their actions and keep still at their last movement. Then the group of students who closed their eyes earlier can open their eyes now. Each one of them need to tell what they did with the simple past tense.

Backward design is the quickest way to help teachers untangle the unit teaching procedure. Once you know what you want to achieve, it’s so much easier for you to figure out what to do at each step.