Resource and Lesson: Marla's Week

Link to Resource

Quick Facts

• PDF
• $3.00 

This is a story I created to help my ELLs review the follow content items:

1. family members
2. days of the week
3. wants and requirements
4. routines
5. question words

We also practised these activities:

• reading (silently or out loud)
• discussion/circling
• reading comprehension
• listening comprehension
• charting​

This resource includes:

1. a simple English story about Marla and her weekly routine
2. a presentation in PDF format of this story with visuals​
3. a PPT version of the story with visuals
4. comprehension questions that can be printed for students to write on or as a discussion after reading

Lesson Ideas

I used this with my ELL learners who were newcomers to the country. Since it is written in basic English, I really wanted to go slowly with this and ensure comprehension. Prior to writing this I had asked students about things they wanted to do and things they had to do. This influenced the things in the story as well. 

I don't want to write a minute by minute lesson plan for this, but I do want to share how I did it by sharing what I considered in between each slide. Take what you want from this and leave the rest :) 
Reading Ideas

• I mostly read this out loud since this was a class of newcomers.
• If a student wanted to read out loud, I let them.
• Once the class became comfortable, we read it together as one voice.
• I never corrected pronunciation unless it hindered comprehension OR the student asked. 

Discussion/Circling While Reading

• Since this was a newcomer class, I started with a fairly traditional Comprehensible Input formula for questions:
  • yes/no question (yes answer)
  • yes/no question (no answer - may be multiple questions)
  • repeat yes/no question with yes answer
  • either or question (may be multiple questions)
  • open ended question (may be multiple questions)
• This is also a great opportunity for personalised questions. Since I had already polled the class I knew who I could comfortably ask about their weekly routine. Then I could expand and include others. 
  • ​e.g. while Maria LOVES to dance and dances daily, Martin hates dancing. But... he watches it on TikTok. 

Embedded Chart Practice

• I had students draw a weekly chart on paper. I showed them the blank chart from the story and we wrote in the days of the week. Since we are in the US, we started with Sunday, but we discussed how they are more familiar with starting on Monday. 
• For each activity, we marked our own charts first and then I revealed the slide with the answers. 
• I also circled which days each activity was done each time we referenced the chart. 

​Final Comprehension Check/Other Activities

• I used this as part of a larger lesson, so I did not include any writing when I did this.
• The TPT file includes questions that can be used as discussion or printed to give to students
  
• Other ideas to consider:
  
  • ​Treat this as a dictation/pictation. Read the sentences twice each and after students write them down, they draw pictures to go with them.
  • Give students the sentences and pictures separately. Have them recreate the story and match pictures to sentences.
    
  • ​Give students the sentences only from this and have them create a comic strip.