Weed read - A lesson plan

Weed read

 Task one- read the text and answer the question.

Who are Billy, Neila and Splodge?

Billy is a boy, Nella is an alien, Splodge is a dog.

Read the text below. There are ten extra words in the text. Highlight the extra words.

Thousands of miles from an earth, on the far away side of the universe is a small planet, Fliptune. It is dark and is cold, far from the sun, behind a much bigger planet.

Little green aliens are live there. They use the torches to see.

One day, a young alien, Neila, did put the wrong batteries in her torch.

Suddenly there to was a dazzling beam of light house. It went up into the sky, around the sun, and was hit planet earth.

The light hit a boy called Billy and his animal dog, Splodge. Neila quickly turned the torch off, but the pair were sucked up by the light.

Weed read – Answer sheet

Read the text below. There are ten extra words in the text. Highlight the extra words in red.

Thousands of miles from an earth, on the far away side of the universe is a small planet, Fliptune. It is dark and is cold, far from the sun, behind a much bigger planet.

Little green aliens are live there. They use the torches to see.

One day, a young alien, Neila, did put the wrong batteries in her torch.

Suddenly there to was a dazzling beam of light house. It went up into the sky, around the sun, and was hit planet earth.

The light hit a boy called Billy and his animal dog, Splodge. Neila quickly turned the torch off, but the pair were sucked up by the light.

Weed read - A lesson plan

Aim:	for students to analyse a text and find the superfluous words
Resources:	one copy of text on a Word document for projection in class
Level:	Pre intermediate +

Stages

1. Select a text of no more than 100 words and put into a Word document. It is a good idea to choose a text which students have already read previously, that way there should be less instances of unknown words and confusion of the meaning of the text.
2. With careful consideration enter ten extra words (see tip below). 
3. Adjust the text size so that it will be readable once projected in the class.
4. In class, project the Word document and set a general question so students get the gist of the story.
5. Explain that there are extra words in the text (if the students have truly skimmed the text they should not have noticed).
6. Ask students to work in small groups and discuss which words are not needed.
7. Nominate one student to control the keyboard.
8. Elicit suggestions from the class. Only accept a suggestion if there is majority agreement from the rest of the class.
9. As teacher you may need to arbitrate.

Tip - When creating similar activities, choose your extra words carefully - is it really wrong? Articles and prepositions are good as they often cause students problems and will make them start analysing this part of the grammar. Adjectives are more tricky as they sometimes could be arguably correct. Tip - So students can see the projection easily, view the Word document in Full Screen view. (View > Full Screen) Tip - If you have a mouse with a scroller wheel, you can easily adjust the text size in a Word document by holding down Ctrl on the keyboard and scrolling on the mouse.