Shopping+Case+Study

**Gymnasium Zlin English Case Study**

**Subject:** English **Class:** 11 (+ 1 for the second lesson) **Age:** 12-13 years **Teacher:** P. Hečková  **Number of Lessons:** 2x 40min

We had an opportunity to take two lessons with a class at Gymnasium Zlin. The pupils were not learning any subject in particular at the time so we could choose any topic. We decided on a topic related to identity, and created a game for students to play that would involve communication.

**Lesson one:** We began the lesson with an “Icebreaker”. We split the class into three groups and made them write three questions on a piece of paper, which was folded and hidden from everyone. The group mixed all the questions up and put them on the table. We had cards and each number meant something, for example a two from the cards meant you had to dance the Macarena or pick a new question. We asked the class to write down any kind of phrase to do with shopping. Some examples are; “Do you have another size of this?” and “how much does this cost?” They had 10 mins to write down every phrase they knew. We gave them a hand-out with useful phrases to use whilst shopping. This would be useful in the next lesson.

**Lesson two: Shopping for your identity** During the next lesson the students created their own poster, which was made up with pieces of “themselves”. This included, for example, what books, movies and music the student likes, what they do in their spare time and what sort of food they prefer. These pieces could either be cut out of a magazine or just drawn by the students. The magazine pieces that we brought to the class were divided to 5 shops: 1. Movie, film, music 2. Hobbies 3. Sports <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">4. Food <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">5. Clothes <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">Learning school members were selling the magazine pieces, so the student had to communicate with us in order to get what they were looking for for their poster. Sometimes the students had to fill in a short task for a pencil or a picture. This task could be filling in missing words or maybe matching questions with answers.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">**What did the students think?** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">The students seemed to be enjoying the task, and the average rate was 9 out of 10. Some students thought there wasn't enough time and that we should have more communication with them. Most students thought it was very fun and creative. There were very different thoughts about the two lessons we had. In general they were pleased.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">**How Did It Relate To Our Research?** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">The aim of the class was for students to communicate with one another as well as ourselves, in a way related to shopping. This is important as it will enhance their communication skills during common situations in real life. We thought they would ease up a little by just talking about things they chose and were interested in. (**Curriculum entitlement and choice)**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">Furthermore, we gave the students a short hand-out at the end of the first lesson so they could practice their shopping vocabulary. This was to be used in the second lesson and with this hand-out they were well prepared **(****Assessment for learning****).**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">In addition to this, the words in the hand-out and the ones they used in the shopping lesson would be relevant beyond the classroom, for example in a grocery store. **(Strong Links Beyond The Classroom)**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">The second lesson included personalisation as students had the choice to create their posted however they desired. Furthermore, students could choose phrases they wanted to use from the hand-out and what shop you wanted to go to, to practice different vocabulary.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">**How Did It Go?** <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">The icebreaker was slow in the beginning because the students were shy, but in the end some of them became more confident. By the time we had them writing down phrases they were more eager to participate and did very well.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">For the second lesson we had some problems to get the students going once again. To overcome this, we tried to encourage them to go to the store and buy things for their posters, but it didn’t always go well. When we gave them a task to complete in order to exchange for a pen/picture, they did not always do the task. Perhaps if we had made a competition of the shopping task the students might have been more eager to participate and that would have made it more interesting for them. We had to keep in mind the age of the students, and that English is their second language.

media type="custom" key="12121828" align="center"

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;">there were two handouts we gave the pupils, here they are. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;"> <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">