Date: 14.12.2011

Form 7 (age 13 - 14)

Teacher: Irina Bučinska

Observer: Larisa Sardiko



Thinking: upgrading the ENV model of another POV text; TTF – step 2.

Subject-specific: another POV: creating a dialogue between animals.

Materials: a task sheet on which the pupils have written the dialogue they created in class


Summary: this lesson shows how pupils use a text created during the lesson as a basis for upgrading the ENV model and how this model helps them to improve the text.

The lesson starts (as usually) from the pupils setting their own aims for the lesson – 2 min


The winter is over. Mother Bear leaves her den with her 2 little cubs. She wants to show the place they are going to live. The cubs are curious and want to know about all things around as everything is new and unknown for them.

Write down a dialogue between Mother Bear and one of her cubs (3 utterances from each participant)


  1. Creating a dialogue – individually, writing it on the task sheets

Time: 5 min

  1. De-briefing:

Time: 15 minutes

The teacher asked the pupils if it was easy/ difficult to create the text. She deliberately had given limited information about the characters in the task, which the pupils noticed.

T. what to do if we have little information about the characters:

P1. find info (in the task, in some sources – factual info)

P2. invent, make up; 

T. what can help us? - P. our model

During this stage the teacher’s purpose was to challenge the pupils to improve the texts using the model created during the previous lessons of their work with POV.


At this stage the teacher provides the input:

  1. Input: Model: Another Point of View as shown in the text



How To show in the text






Choice of words

attitude to others/himself/life/interests



sth special about the characters


Author' comments, description



Talk and behaviour


  1. Input: Pictures of animal cubs

The teacher guides the pupils to focus on characteristic features specific for animals. (The problem arose from their description of squirrels which was very similar to that of a child)

(T. what to do now? - P1 – describe appearance

T. only appearance – P2. - we can see they are naughty; T. what parameter is it? P3. - the character

III. Pupils describe the animals-characters (appearance and character) relying on the model

Time: 5 minutes

After they wrote the description of the characters, T. elicited what for they had done that.

P 1. We wrote a text and only after that we took the parameters randomly*, controversial* – now it may be more logical

P2 we have put together all features not to lose* anything

IV. Using the model to improve the dialogues

Time – 5 min

T. Now go back to your text (dialogue) and check – have you used all the How To?

Do you agree that you can go back to text and check it?

P1 – perhaps we can write another text and use the model?

V. De-briefing – 5 min

T. elicits more reasons to check the text: Did you think of all the parameters: mood, behavior, etc.?

VI. Adding and editing - 5 min

VII. Reading one best sentence each and explaining the reason for its selection – 3 min

T. Look at your text and make sure you have described animals not kids. Look into your texts and underline the sentences that will immediately tell me that they describe the cubs. Be ready to explain.

S1. - Mummy, mummy, shall we have bees in our new place?

Why is it good? - Mood (good) T. Shown how? – P. I used punctuation, language (mummy), attitude (punctuation), he speaks fast (the author’s remark), how else can we show? – by mother’s words (‘speak slower’, for example)

T. Bees? Appropriate or not? Why not? P1. It is not about the place; T. Does she (cub) know about bees? It has just been born – it knows nothing about bees (not logical);

S2. Can I go to the sea in our new den?  (language: the word ‘den’, shows curiosity)

S3. Oh my dear, roared Mother Bear (Instead of ‘said’ P. used ‘roared’; animals roar)

Homework: Write another dialogue with a second character, e.g. a she-cub (if it was a he-cub before).


In the following lesson the teacher intends to work with the best pieces of the text as well as with problems. NB. The ultimate goal is to build an effective model which can be used for this kind of task, not to create this one-off task.






# Susan Granlund 2011-12-30 11:58
Larisa and Irina,
I really enjoyed reading the description of this lesson. The task sounds so simple, in a way, and yet has so much scope, and is actually not easy at all. Can I ask what kind of task sheet the pupils had? Did it just state the task, or was there more information on it? Was the model they had created during previous POV tasks the same as the one shown as input, or was that particular model the teacher's? Do they generally all make their own models, or do you usually discuss them as a class and build them up together? I'd also be very interested to know how and when you fist introduced POV to the pupils and what kinds of tasks you used.

Another very interesting thing here is how the pupils set their own aims at the beginning of the lesson. Presumably this is the result of a great deal of practice? I haven't done anything like that at all, but it sounds extremely useful and I'd like to know more!
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