Description of Original Activity

Unit 8 of the textbook Interchange: 3^rd Edition is all about neighborhoods. In this activity, students must answer questions using quantifiers. This activity focuses on acquisition of the previous grammar lesson and has students apply that knowledge in answering these questions. In terms of difficulty, I would give this activity a 2/5. While quantifiers can be confusing, there is a “reference chart” students can look back at and answer the questions with ease. This brings up a concern of if they are learning or if they are just looking at the chart.

Strengths

The strengths of this activity are that it has students practice quantifiers using sentences that are both easy to read and that make sense in terms of the activity. This activity still holds the theme of “neighborhoods”, which helps students not only learn about grammar, but pick up new vocabulary that might pop up again within this chapter. It also gives students an opportunity not only to answer questions, but to create questions themselves that they can ask other students. It has both grammatical and writing activities for the students to practice.

Weaknesses

The weaknesses of this activity are that the questions have multiple answers, which may confuse the students. Now, this could also be seen as a strength with how this also incorporates reading comprehension and context clues, but this is something the students recently learned. It is still fresh in their minds and is not something they have mastered yet. They also have a reference chart due to it being new information, and while that is not bad, it still does not help with students learning the material as they could easily just look at the chart and not actually understand how to use quantifiers.

Adaptation

I would first get rid of the reference chart so that the students can apply what they have learned rather than answer these questions “mindlessly.” However, I would still be available to answer any questions the students may have. The activity itself also focuses on the student’s neighborhood, which is a term that can be confusing with the questions that are asked. I would change the questions to better fit the term, and also have them focus on one quantifier rather than several. I would also change some of the terms used in these questions to better fit “modern” times. For the “partnered” part of this assignment, I would get rid of the vocabulary that they could use in their questions and have them come up with their own new question completely.

Materials Needed:

• Interchange: 3^rd Edition Textbook
• A partner (more if finished early)

Rationale

The changes I made to this activity still has students read and answer questions based on their neighborhoods using the quantifiers that they just learned. Instead of having a reference chart, the students are now required to use and apply what they just learned to the sentences, therefore having an effect on their acquisition of quantifiers. Changing the terminology and how neighborhood is represented makes it easier for the student to understand, but still keeps the difficulty of the assignment and keeping the vocabulary appropriate for their language level. Getting rid of any helping vocabulary for the group work also makes it more challenging for the student, having them use both their grammar knowledge and vocabulary knowledge to create coherent questions.