Lesson/Unit Summary: This student-oriented lesson plan is about the usage of ‘few’, ‘a few’, ‘little’ and ‘a little’, which are presented in a simulated school anniversary context. Students have to consider the items they have in the classroom and decide what items are needed for the celebration preparation. For instance, if they have little glue, they will have to buy more. Using an inductive approach, Teacher asks students to listen to a Student Union meeting with the target structures used, and deduce the grammar rules associated with the determiners ‘few/a few’ and ‘little/a little’. Students are also asked to deduce the different connotations associated with ‘few’ and ‘a few’, and ‘little’ and ‘a little’ from the sentences found in the meeting transcript. The final task is to write a proposal to the School Principal about a class activity for the school anniversary, in which students have to use the learnt determiners to indicate the materials needed and the reasons.
Level of Students: Junior Secondary
Lesson Duration: 50 minutes (1-2 lessons)
Learning Objectives:
At the end of this unit, students should be able to:
- Use a few and a little to talk about things that are of insufficient amount
- Show an understanding of the differences between the determiners few, a few, little and a little
- Use the determiners to write a proposal to the school principal about a school anniversary celebration event
Lesson Plan: Few & Little (Junior Secondary)
Teaching Materials:
Useful Websites:
- https://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/vocabulary/little-few
- http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/little-a-little-few-a-few
- http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/agr_littlefew.html
- http://www.tolearnenglish.com/exercises/exercise-english-2/exercise-english-25720.php
Acknowledgements:
We would like to express our gratitude to Lui Ka Man for sending the project team her original lesson plan and allowing us to make modifications to it.
The copyright of the learning materials belongs to The Education University of Hong Kong. We are grateful to the original authors for granting us the right to share their ideas. Please fully acknowledge the source of the materials and the authors.
Duplication of the materials is restricted to non-profit making educational purposes only. Otherwise, no part of these materials may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the Project Supervisor.
To cite this resource:
Mak, P. Y., & Lee, F. K. J. (2020). Few & little. Retrieved from https://lml.eduhk.hk/grammar/?page_id=245.
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