Grade 9 Language Acquisition students are currently engaged in a unit called “Love,” and one of the inquiry questions they are focusing on is “How do different cultures express love?” As a response to this, students are creating pamphlets giving advice to peers about going on a first date in their home countries.
First, students viewed examples of pamphlets collected from various parts of the school and tried to find features they had in common, such as the use of headings, short paragraphs and pictures and charts. They identified the purpose of pamphlets as being to inform and sometimes persuade.
Next, students read an article entitled“For the Perfect First Date” from a class text, Effective Reading 3. The article discussed what to do and not to do on a first date. We discussed that this article was most probably written for a Western audience, as some of the advice would not be appropriate in all our home cultures.
Students then looked at two grammatical structures that can be used for giving advice, imperative verbs and conditional sentences. They researched the rules for forming the structures and found examples of how to use them. Students taught these structures to their peers before individually practising both of them.
Finally, students were given their task. They brainstormed the different elements of a first date, both from the article and using their own ideas. As a class, we came to a consensus as to which of these elements could vary, depending on culture. Students were told to incorporate imperatives and conditional sentences as well as to include specific features when creating the pamphlets.