UNIT 1 FINAL TASK

[SILVIA]

The book that we use is from the Oxford publishing company that has a digital support, it was called ACE 3. I noticed with the number 3, its title is "Lift-off". It is prepared for a third grade level of primary school, the truth is that it is a little high compared to other books at this level.
Of course, all instructions, questions ... are in English.
In this unit, the students work: vocabulary of professions is worked, the use of the verb CAN and the possessive using 's.
Personally, I think it would be convenient to have more level options because it is quite limited, especially in listening, but it is also true that the teacher can follow the book by not doing exactly what the book guide tells you. In each unit,there's a worksheet of mixed skills with the same topic.
For my students it is much more rewarding when we play games where they can demonstrate everything they are capable of doing, open activities where every student has a place, from a student with difficulties to an advantage one.
The main problem is not the book, what I have to analyze is the methodology that is offered, avoid the master class, the student has to be the protagonist of his own learning.

[Irina]

The book is called LEarning Teaching by James Scrivener (Chapter 2) that is focused on developing teachers' skills and confidence as a result of becoming the best teacher you can be.
In chapter 2 it's considered the subject matters of language teaching: language systems and languale skills. In both ways it's given some tasks for the different class abilities and the commentaries below. The section of this unit offers a number of hints and strategies that might help a teacher do the first lessons (e.g. use the coursebook, a lesson is a sequence of activities, learn something about your students, plan student-focused activities).
Moreover, a teacher can use the considered methods as the mixed ability classes to cater for the needs of faster and slower students.
For example, Communicative Language Teaching is based on beliefs that learners will learn best if they participate in meaningful communication. The strong students can learn by communicating ( doing tasks with a limited role for explicit teaching and traditional practice exercises) but the weak students learn through a wide variety of teaching ( activities, exercises, study).

[Oksana_Gavrish]

Book: Superminds 2. Level: starters; Unit: My day; main language and communicative aims of the unit: by the end of the unit students will be able to use present simple, add 's' ending to the third person singular and form negative and interrogative statements about present situations, also students will use the phrase "what time is it?" "when to you?"
I like the book a lot, it has all types of texts and it is organized the way, so that students drill vocabulary and grammar grately. The tasks in the unit are devided into parts that train different skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening, and each part is graded by the level of difficulty of the tasks. At the end of the unit there are pretty difficult task, which I use sometimes as extrs taske for faster students. For example in this unit it's exercise about time zones and it's very difficult topic for students because they don't know this material at all. Sometimes I also use this tasks to challange some students, while weaker students get extra 10 minutes for finishing some tasks and extra explenation from the teacher. This set of book has teacher's resourse pack, that has variety of materials of different difficulty, I like to use them as extra material and if some exersise seems to challanging for students , I can change them. For example, if the text is to difficult or meets no interests of students, I may change it into some another reading task with topic, that will be more understandable for students, if the questions after the text is too difficule, I may change them or may change the format, adding variants of answers to the questions, I think it's possible to adapt any material, though with mix ability groups it will be really challanging for the teacher.

[Yuliya Pervova]

I work with the course Think Starter, 3,4, Cambridge. The Teacher's Book offers full support including teacher's notes for fast finishers, for SS typical mistakes, suggestions for extra activities and mixed ability classes as well as tips on how to get the best out of the digital components. For instance, there are different types of Grammar and Vocabulary worksheet per each unit: Basic, Extension. Train to think (speaking and discussion sections) can be easily adapted for mixed-ability classes. I can assign the discussion task to mixed ability pairs first and then discuss in the groups the same ideas (we can choose to use the target language previously presented in the Reading section or go further and provoke more engaging discussion).