period 3 listening and speaking
the general idea of this period this is the third period of this unit. at the beginning of this period, the teacher should (can) design some exercises to review what the students learned in the last period, that is to say, go over what the students learned about that john snow defeats“king cholera”. the teacher can begin with asking some questions or having a competition to make some sentences with“john snow”according to the passage. during this period, listening and speaking will be mainly dealt with. at the beginning, teachers focus on training the ss’ listening. this listening content is about the importance of qian xuesen for space travel in china, the contributions made by a botanist named carl linnaeus and the research into the life and work of a mathematician called leonhard euler. when training the ss’ listening ability, teachers should start with pre-listening, that is, lead-in. if it is necessary, teachers had better introduce some background knowledge about the listening material. later, let the ss listen to it. at the same time, teachers should design some simple questions. after that, the ss have known about the listening material, and then teachers can ask them to listen to it again to be ready for more difficult questions. if necessary, the ss can be given another time to listen. while practicing, teachers had better offer students some advice on how to do it well. especially, train the students to predict what to be talked about according to the hints and limited information and let them form the good listening habit of listening with the purpose of finding useful information and to summarize. certainly, suppose there are many new words and expressions, teachers should help them to deal with them at the first place. all the listening practice should focus on developing the students’ listening skill. after practicing listening, the ss are expected to learn some expressions about talking about scientific job as well as scientists’ achievements and recount stories. besides those, the students are expected to learn the skill of describing a person. during the course, teachers should rank class activities from the easy to the difficult. first, ask them to learn the expressions. then, ask them to imitate it to have a dialogue. finally, the students are expected to create a dialogue or discuss the given topic. in order to draw students’ attention, the teacher had better prepare for some interesting situations. this period centers on emphasis on speaking and listening. the teacher should try his or her best to encourage the students to say something. don’t always correct the mistakes that the students would make while speaking. otherwise, the students would feel reluctant to speak out their opinions. teaching important points train the students’ speaking ability by describing, talking and discussing. help the students improve their listening ability. teaching difficulties train the students’ listening ability. especially listen and understand what the speakers mean beyond words. teaching aids
three dimensional teaching aims knowledge aims: let the ss know about some scientists and their life and contributions. get the ss to learn how to talk about scientific work and how to describe a person. ability aims: train the students’ speaking ability by describing, talking and discussing. train the students’ listening ability. emotional aims: train the students’ability to cooperate with others. encourage the students to learn from scientists to show interest in scientific exploration and research.
teaching procedure step 1 greeting t: hello, boys and girls. ss: hello, miss wang. step 2 revisiont: today we will begin our lesson with a competition between groups. in the last period, we learnt about john snow who defeats“king cholera”. now, please say something that you know about it. if you offer a complete sentence, you will be given ten marks. your group will be given twenty marks when your expression is especially beautiful. s: john snow was a well-known doctor in london, who attended queen victoria to ease the birth of her babies. s: he became inspired when he thought about helping ordinary people exposed to cholera, which was the deadly disease of his day. s: john snow got interested in two theories explaining how cholera killed people. s: he believed in the second theory that is people absorbed this disease into their bodies with their meals. from the stomach the disease attacked the body quickly and soon the affected person was dead. ss: . . . (the teacher should encourage more students to join in the competition. at the end of the competition, the teacher should announce the result of this competition. praise the winner and encourage the losers. ) t: what can we learn from john show? s: we should base our theories on practice. s: we are inspired to have a spirit of scientific exploration. s: we do some research with the purpose of serving the people and society. ss: . . . t: yes, we can learn a lot from the scientist. in fact, there are a great number of people working on science worthy of being learned both at home and abroad. can you name some scientists and introduce their main contributions? s: archimedes, who discovered that objects in water are lifted up by a force that helps them float. s: darwin wrote a book explaining how animals and plants developed as the environment changed. s: madam curie discovered radium. s: stephen hawking put forward a theory about black holes. s: zhang heng invented the earliest instrument to tell people where earthquakes happened. ss: . . . t: you did a good job and listed many scientists as well as their contributions. today, we are going to learn about more scientists. step 3 listening (on pages 5-6)
task 1 pre-listeningt: first let’s enjoy the picture. what can you see? s: president jiang zemin and an old man. t: president jiang zemin visited qian xuesen. t: what have you already known about qian xuesen? s: he is a chinese scientist, whose research mainly centers on physics. s: he is honored as“chinese rocket father”. s: he has made great contributions to space travel in china. t: good. you seem to have a good knowledge of him. qian xuesen is a famous scientist who has contributed much to the country’s cause of science and technology. task 2 first listeningt: we are to listen to the material, which is about qian xuesen. yu ping is telling her friend steve smith about qian xuesen’s life. if you were yu ping, what topics would you like to cover when introducing him? s: the date when he was born and he died;the place where he was born, lived, studied and died;his family;his experience;his achievements;his contributions t: excellent. when we talk about and introduce a scientist, we usually describe these aspects. now, listen carefully and tick out which topics are mentioned in the tape. (after listening, let them check the answers. ) task 3 second listeningt: this time. you’ll write down the answers to the five questions. boys and girls, how can we write the answers fast and correctly? s: we should go through the questions first and keep them in mind. when we are listening, we just need to pay much attention to the sentences related to the answers. s: we needn’t write down each word of the answers. we just write down some key words. later we can write down the complete answers with the help of these key words. t: you are clever. now please get ready. first, look through the introduction to the listening material. then, scan the questions. (two minutes later, the teacher plays the tape. then give ss time to organize their sentences. ) t: let’s check the answers one by one. (if the students make some common mistakes or they seem to have difficulty in finding out answers, teachers can give them some hints and let them listen to it again. after that, check the answers. if the students feel it difficult to make sense about the key words and understand the speakers’ intention and attitude, the teacher should give them some help. ) task 4 post-listeningt: after listening, would you please answer some questions? 1 what did you hear on the tape? 2 what can you learn from qian xuesen? (at this part the teacher may have the students present what they have heard on the tape and show their own opinion about what they have learned from him. if possible, the teacher may have some of the students do the presentation work in class. by doing this, the students can get full understanding of what the tape is talking about. ) step 4 listening (page 41)
the design of the writing on the blackboard
unit 1 great scientists
period 3 listening and speakingthe questions may be useful to discuss the scientific job,the expressions may help you to discuss your future scientific job.what job do you want to do?what education will you need?what personality will be needed?what work experience would be useful?how long will the training take?how will you prepare for this career?i always wanted to...because...the experience i will need is...i might find it difficult to...i need to practise...my greatest problem will be to...i will need to be/become patient, creative, hard-working, co-operative, confident, brave...
research and activitiesafter class, use the library or the internet to find out facts about important women scientists in medicine, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy or mathematics.there are very useful websites (including the“biographies of women mathematicians website”).prepare a talk on your chosen scientists.remember to include some information about their life, their achievements and why they are considered important in science history.then give your talk to the class.
research for teaching
euler, leonhard(born april 15, 1707, basel, switz.died sept.18, 1783, st.petersburg, russia)swiss mathematician and physicist, one of the founders of pure mathematics.he not only made decisive and formative contributions to the subjects of geometry, calculus, mechanics, and number theory but also developed methods for solving problems in observational astronomy and demonstrated useful applications of mathematics in technology and public affairs.euler’s mathematical ability earned him the esteem of johann bernoulli, one of the first mathematicians in europe at that time, and of his sons daniel and nicolas.in 1727 he moved to st.petersburg, where he became an associate of the st.petersburg academy of sciences and in 1733 succeeded daniel bernoulli to the chair of mathematics.euler devoted considerable attention to developing a more perfect theory of lunar motion, which was particularly troublesome, since it involved the so-called three-body problem—the interactions of the sun, moon, and earth.(the problem is still unsolved.) his partial solution, published in 1753, assisted the british admiralty in calculating lunar tables, of importance then in attempting to determine longitude at sea.one of the feats of his blind years was to perform all the elaborate calculations in his head for his second theory of lunar motion in 1772.throughout his life euler was much absorbed by problems dealing with the theory of numbers, which treats of the properties and relationships of integers, or whole numbers (0, ±1, ±2, etc.); in this, his greatest discovery, in 1783, was the law of quadratic reciprocity, which has become an essential part of modern number theory.
carl linnaeus(born may 23, 1707, r shult, sm land, swed. died jan.10, 1778, uppsala )carl linnaeus is a swedish botanist and explorer who was the first to frame principles for defining genera and species of organisms and to create a uniform system for naming them.linnaeus was the son of a curate.his love of flowers developed at an early age; when only eight years old he was nicknamed“the little botanist.”he studied at the universities of lund and uppsala and received his degree in medicine from the latter.
the systema naturae, which linnaeus had shown to the botanist jan fredrik gronovius in manuscript, so impressed gronovius that he published it at his own expense.linnaeus’ system was based mainly on flower parts, which tend to remain unchanged during the course of evolution. although artificial, as linnaeus himself recognized, such a system had the supreme merit of enabling students rapidly to place a plant in a named category.it came into use at a period when the richness of the world’s vegetation was being discovered at a rate that outstripped more leisurely methods of investigation.so successful was his method in practice that its very ease of application proved to be the greatest obstacle to its replacement by the more natural systems that superseded it.
his later years were taken up by teaching and the preparation of other works: flora suecica (1745) and fauna suecica (1746); two volumes of observations made during the journeys in weden, v stg ta resa (1747) and sk nska resa (1751); hortus upsaliensis (1748); his philosophia botanica (1751); and the important species plantarum (1753), in which the specific names are fully set forth.in 1755 he declined an invitation from the king of spain to settle in that country with a liberal salary and full liberty of conscience.in 1761 he was granted a swedish patent of nobility, antedated to 1757, from which time he was styled carl von linné.an apoplectic attack in 1774 left him greatly weakened, and he died four years later.
marie curie
(born nov.7, 1867, warsaw, pol., russian empire.died july 4, 1934, near sallanches, france )maria sklodowska polish—born french physicist famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the nobel prize.with henri becquerel and her husband, pierre curie, she was awarded the 1903 nobel prize for physics.she was then the sole winner of the 1911 nobel prize for chemistry.from childhood she was remarkable for her prodigious memory, and at the age of 16 she won a gold medal on completion of her secondary education at the russian lycée.because her father, a teacher of mathematics and physics, lost his savings through bad investment, she had to take work as a teacher and, at the same time, took part clandestinely in the nationalist“free university, ”reading in polish to women workers.at the age of 18 she took a post as governess, where she suffered an unhappy love affair.from her earnings she was able to finance her sister bronia’s medical studies in paris, on the understanding that bronia would in turn later help her to get an education.she came first in the licence of physical sciences in 1893.she began to work in lippmann’s research laboratory and in 1894 was placed second in the licence of mathematical sciences. it was in the spring of this year that she met pierre curie.their marriage (july 25, 1895) marked the start of a partnership that was soon to achieve results of world significance, in particular the discovery of polonium (so called by marie in honour of her native land) in the summer of 1898, and that of radium a few months later.following henri becquerel’s discovery (1896) of a new phenomenon (which she later called“radioactivity”), marie curie, looking for a subject for a thesis, decided to find out if the property discovered in uranium was to be found in other matter.she discovered that this was true for thorium at the same time as g.c.schmidt did.in december 1904 she was appointed chief assistant in the laboratory directed by pierre curie.the sudden death of pierre curie (april 19, 1906) was a bitter blow to marie curie, but it was also a decisive turning point in her career: henceforth she was to devote all her energy to completing alone the scientific work that they had undertaken.on may 13, 1906, she was appointed to the professorship that had been left vacant on her husband’s death; she was the first woman to teach in the sorbonne.in 1908 she became titular professor, and in 1910 her fundamental treatise on radioactivity was published.in 1911 she was awarded the nobel prize for chemistry, for the isolation of pure radium.in 1914 she saw the completion of the building of the laboratories of the radium institute (institut du radium) at the university of paris.