Урок "Проблеми сучасної школи"

Topic: School problems

Objectives: Practical: to teach students reading comprehension, speaking on the topic

Developing: to develop students’ communicative skills; to develop students’ creativity in reading skills

Upbringing:  to  give students an opportunity to regard the way things are, become self-critical;

Materials needed the copies of the text  " Why aren’t you at school, sonny?"

                                                   Procedure

1. Introduction.
2. Warming-up

T. A shocking piece of information has appeared  on the Net site  recently. In Britain 90 000 schoolchildren play truant (are absent from school) every day for a variety of reasons that can sometimes be trivial, sometimes very serious.

Answer  the  questions:

1. Have you ever skipped class?
2. Did you get away with it or were you caught?
3. Are you at home right now?

Reading  activity

Pre-reading  activity

3.2 .Predicting. If you don’t know, ask,OK?

Work  in groups of four. Write  three questions on the topic “Problem of cutting  lessons”. Explain why you have chosen these questions.

3.3.Vocabulary  Mystery  word. Read the clues and try to guess what **** is.

1. Some students often **** because they are bored at school.
2. The situation is  very tense and  I am afraid it is****out of control.
3. As usual parents ****when their children  have problems with school attendance.
4. The problem of cutting lessons is closely****to the problem of youth crime.
5. attendance
6. resort to
7. turn up

( answers: 1.play truant, 2.get out of control 3. worry   4. to be linked to 5.attendance  6.resort to  7.turn up)

While-reading activity.

4.1. Read the text.

                                  Why aren’t you at school, sonny?

     This is a question that many British schoolchildren may hear at some point in their school careers, when they are “playing truant”, “bunking off”, or absent without permission. The government thinks that absenteeism is getting out of control in England, but what can they do to make sure children go to school? Here are some of the reasons they are worried.

           One million children a year bunk off school (go absent without a reason ). In primary schools (5-11) the average time missed per absent pupil is over five days in the year. For secondary schools (11-16), it is 10  days.

           Why is it such a problem? The evidence shows that truancy is linked to crime and failure at school. When children are out of school they might be committing crime and they certainly aren’t learning.

             What is the answer then? Some people think  it is electronic registration:

This is a chip in a  card that the children have to swipe at the beginning of the

 school day. When the children put the card in a  machine the headmaster can see immediately who is in the school and who is absent.

              The best way of improving attendance is to make school, and the gaps between the lessons more interesting. Some schools  which have had attendance problems in the past have started lunchtime radio stations, sport, music and breakfast club with morning TV and aerobics.

               Other schools have resorted to more extreme methods  when pupils don’t turn up. Last year 9000 children were expelled from schools in England, a big rise in figures. Many children were excluded for violence and criminal behaviour. Of course, throwing children out of schools solves one problem bit immediately creates many more. Some teachers want corporal punishment brought (beating children with stocks) back into the classroom (it was banned in the 1970s) but the government didn’t agree.

                 One parent knows very well the cost of truancy, not only to her children’s education, but to her own freedom too. A mother of five, Patricia Amos, was  the first person in Britain to be sent to jail for failing to send her children to schools. She was sent to prison for 60 days after being found guilty in Oxford. She served 28 days in a very dangerous and violent women’s prison in London. Mrs. Amos said, ”the whole horrible thing worked. It has brought me to my senses”.

                                                                                          (Jeremy Moris)

          Post-reading  activity

        4.2.   T. When we speak about problems we often  use the following scheme :

1. Problem
2. reasons for
3. consequences for society
4. The way of solution

Now   read  the  text   and try  to  build  a very interesting pyramid:

1. 1 word  describing the  problem
2. 2 words  naming the reasons
3.  3 words naming the consequences for society
4.   4 words  describing the way of solution

4.3. Discussion.  Compare your  pyramids. Which ways of solving the problems of attendance do you prefer? Give your reasons.

4.4. Writing. Fill in the flow diagram:

                                      Is strict control of school attendance necessary?

    No                                                                                    Yes

   Why not?                                                       In all situations or only in some?

  What alternative do you                                  Why?

suggest?                                                            How

                                                                        What forms of control are possible?

                                                                         Dangers

                                                     What are the problems associated with strict 

                                                     Control of school attendance?

                                                                          Suggestions

                                                      Suggest an effective way of controlling school 

                                                      Attendance.

  Each student is to write the best suggestions and to share them  with other students.

5.Post-reading activity

5.1.Work in  groups of three or  five.

One of you is a British sociologist who is interested in  school  attendance. The others are Ukrainian teens.  The sociologist will ask you the following  questions :

1. Have you ever stayed away  from school for no reasons?
2. What were the reasons for your absence?
3. Why can’t students be absent from school?
4. Is school attendance a problem of teachers, students or parents?
5. What can make the students who play truant start attending  school again?
6. Does the reasons for poor attendance lie in the lack of discipline or the lack of motivation?

Share your group opinion concerning each question with  everybody.

5.2. Improvise dialogues of the following  situation:

A  teacher approaches a child and his/her mother /father at school day in a shopping centre. They give their excuses for being out of school.

6. Summarizing.

Home assignment:

Creative  activity. Imagine that you are a reporter in teens’ magazine.

Your task  is  to  write  your  comments on  the following statement:

“Truancy has , and will, always be a fact of  life. There are many reasons for truancy and there fore it’s beyond remedy”.