Rationale

RATIONALE Speaking is one of the most challenging skills for high school students. They may feel bored because they can not handle it so well. Therefore, we tried to integrate interesting activities into the lesson so that we could arouse students’ spirit. We made full use of pictures to teach the lesson as meaningful pictures talk more than words. On designing the lesson plan, we took students’ learning styles into consideration. Consequently, all the activities are arranged with a view to satisfying three learning styles including auditory, visual and kinaesthetic learners. For the lead in activity, we let students watch the video of the song “Earth song” of Michael Jackson. The video itself can meet the requirement of auditory and visual learners. The content of the song which is about the nature in danger lively reflects the topic of the speaking period. Thanks to this, students will be able to have an overview of the lesson they are going to study with exciting atmosphere through the video. More over, we adapted 2 activities in while speaking stage into 2 useful games. For the memorizing game, it can exploit the strength of 3 learning styles. Firstly, visual learners will do their best by looking at the pictures to memorize the reasons why nature is in danger as well as the measurement to protect nature. Secondly, auditory learners are able to listen to their friends’ ideas to make sure that their team will not repeat the same reasons or measurements. Last but not least, the activity also benefits kinaesthetic learners as they themselves will take turn to speak out their team’s ideas to obtain points. As a consequent, 2 games enable our students to take advantage of time partly to practice speaking through the supports of available pictures partly to listen to their friends. After students have gained a great deal of useful information, post speaking activity will lead students to writing about one of the endangered animals