Pedagogical Component

Lesson plan

Engage

Topic introduction: Show the students a short video that puts on evidence the pollution made by buses to the environment in the cities of Colombia; then, ask for their opinion about it and ask them what they would say to the transport ministry and environmental ministry about the pollution caused by those public transports.

Introduction to the task: Students will be encouraged to perform a formal letter in order to complain about the pollution caused by buses. Some complaint letters will be shown.

 Brainstorm: Make small groups to associate ideas and terms that they could use in order to write the letter, after that, the teacher uses the board to write the main ideas from the groups made; then, the whole class will collaborate to construct a mind map in order to make a resume.

Fast write: In pairs, students make a few sentences in order to prepare a draft, similar to the letter based on the examples.

Selection and rejection: The couples of students select the main ideas and reject the unnecessary information and informal terms.

Sort and order: Students organizes the sentences in order to organize the structure of the letter.  They have to check grammar and the writing style.

Study

Specific requirements:  Show to the students the correct order to write a complaint letter, also make them include appropriate terms to join sentences, like subordinators and coordinators. Students are guided on how to make a correct introduction paragraph, two body paragraphs and one conclusion paragraph.

Focus on models: Students are shown some letters already made to the transport ministry complaining about similar topics in order to compare the writing style, the vocabulary and the sentence structure.

Activate

Drafting:  Students will make the draft of the letter based on the examples, joining the sentences and the paragraphs that they already organized.

Feedback: The drafts will be shared to the whole class and then, the main ideas will be written on the board and the drafts will be exchanged between the students, they will receive the feedback based on a rubric designed by the teacher.

Editing: Students will search from their partners’ mistakes and then they will make some corrections with some help of the teacher.

Final text:  Student will receive their drafts corrected by their partners; after that, they will finally write the letter. Finally, they will send it on e-mail to his teacher as homework.