Lesson Plan

Lesson Plan

• as a motivating introduction to the topic, students will listen to the songs Proud to be an American by Lee Greenwood and Bobby Brown by Frank Zappa, which both deal with American identity, patriotism and the "American Dream" -- this however, in quite opposing respects

• after they have listened to the songs, students will be asked to work in pairs

• each group of two will be alternately given the lyrics of one of the two songs with the task to work out either the positive or negative aspects of American identity portrayed in their particular song

• for that, the groups will be provided with the lyrics of their song and are encourage to use online dictionaries if they have any problems with unknown vocabulary

• students are supposed to work with their partners, and one student of each pair is supposed to type their findings into one common PiratePad

• hence, students will be able to depict their results and peer-review them simultaneously

• after that, the outcomes of both groups will be discussed with the whole class

Didactic Considerations

The Curriculum

According to the Hessian G8 curriculum for English, the overall topic for grade 11G.1 is "The Challenge of Individualism" (Hessisches Kultusministerium 59). For both, the Leistungskurs as well as the Grundkurs, the USA is obligatory teaching content . Proposals for topics are for example "the American Dream" and America's "(rugged) individualism" as well as America's "sense of mission (patriotism)".
  Thus, the following lesson is meant as an introductory lesson to a sequence of lessons which deal with American identity. Subsequent to this lesson the sequence of lessons could be continued with the reading of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example.

Hessian G8 Curriculum for English (Hessisches Kultusministerium 59)

The Choice of Material

The Choice of Music
Our group has chosen the medium music for the topic of our teaching session because we thought that two songs would be an appropriate and good start into this sophisticated and wide topic. The students propably will enjoy the medium music more than reading a text and they will also get the opportunity to listen to native speakers, through which their pronunciation and comprehension for the English language will be trained. Our consideration was also that those controversial and ambitious songs are not only as good as a controversial and ambitious newspaper article or text. The students will also have more fun and motivation by at first listening to the songs and then working with them. By this we expect a fluent and successful start into the new topic.

The Choice of the Two Songs
We decided to take especially these two songs, Lee Greenwood's Proud to be an American and Frank Zappa's Bobby Brown, because both songs deal with the American identity but one completely different from the other. Both songs have extreme lyrics that leave a huge space for various opinions and interpretations.
  While the song of Greenwood proclaims the patriotism and pride of America and regards those attitudes as the best of the US, the song of Zappa on the other hand occupies with the negative effects of the American attitude and identity. In spite of the explicit lyrics in the song Bobby Brown we still think that those songs are very good examples to show the students the ambiguity of the American society. It is appropriate material for an 11th grade, however, it may depend on the individual learning group and has to be carefully considered when to putting the lesson into practice.
The Choice of Media

YouTube
To be quite honest, there is only one particular reason for our choice of YouTube: our lesson is planned for being taught in a media room, so it is the most convenient medium. We only use it as a provider for the songs, so a oldschool VHS tape would basically do the same job. However, YouTube can be quite motivating for students, for whom YouTube often is part of their everyday life.

PiratePad
We chose PiratePad for the group work since it allows students to cooperatively work together in large groups without the hassle of arranging tables etc. Large groups can peer-review each other, which also saves time compared to e.g. a Gruppenpuzzle.

Online Dictionaries
While there are teachers who condemn in-class use of online dictionaries or even traditional dictionaries if it is not a monolingual one, it nevertheless is one of the long-term goals of a language teacher to teach the correct use a dictionary. Thus, we want to encourage our students to look up unknown words in their dictionary of choice. An online dictionary can save a lot of time, nevertheless the student has to be in command of it for a successful use.



Teaching Aims


Content

• the lesson is meant as a motivating introductory lesson to the huge topic of the USA and American identity
• the students are supposed to recognise that there are different point of views on touchy subjects such as "the American Dream", patriotism or American identity
• after the lesson, students should be able to name some of the idealised examples as well as examples for the downside of American idividualism

Communication and Language Skills

• practise of listening and reading comprehension
• training of phonology
• discussion skills

Social Skills

• working cooperatively
• arranging with the contributions of classmates

Work Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Scribner, 1992.

Lehrplan Englisch. Gymnasialer Bildungsgang. Jahrgangsstufen 6G bis 12G. Ed. Hessisches Kultusministerium. 12 Jan 2011 <http://www.kultusministerium.hessen.de>.