“ottos mops” by Ernst Jandl

This lesson is designed for students to enjoy a short amusing poem, as well as refine their knowledge of short “o” and long “o” sounds, and use higher order thinking skills to analyze who or what otto and mops are.

A lesson plan for grades 9–12 Second Languages

By Helga Fasciano

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Related topics

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• pronounce the “o” correctly according to the phoneme pattern
• use comprehension strategies to interpret the poem
• change interpretation of the poem using different intonation

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

90 minutes

Materials/resources

• copy of the poem (available in Holt German Level 3: Komm mit!, p.47)
• materials for student visual for presentation such as a posterboard, construction paper, software, etc.
• optional — teacher may want to show other vowel phoneme patterns and/or provide word families list (words that follow the same pattern as in the word otto or mops)

Technology resources

If teacher chooses to use computer software, he/she should also decide if the visual will be printed for presentation or projected during presentation.

Pre-activities

Teacher will model different intonations of words from the poem such as soso and komm. The purpose is to model how different intonation can color the meaning or interpretation of meaning of the word.

Activities

Shared Reading

1. Teacher reads the poem aloud without stopping as the class follows along, stressing the correct pronunciation of the vowel “o” in each word.
2. The students read the poem aloud with the teacher, following the teacher’s model.
3. Teacher rereads the poem aloud, using different intonation.
4. The students reread the poem aloud with the teacher, following the teacher’s new model.
5. Teacher uses a graphic organizer and asks students to guess who or what mops is.
6. After guessing who or what mops is, students will form groups based on who or what they believe mops is. For example, those that believe mops is a dog will form a group, and those that believe mops is a monkey form another group, and so forth and so on.

Alphabet, Phoneme or Phonics Awareness

7. Once students are settled in their groups, the teacher will ask students to create word families from the words in the poem. For instance, they should group together, mops, trozt, fort, holt, etc. whereas, otto will be by itself and perhaps ogottogott will be by itself. Teacher will model the “o” sound followed by multiple consonants versus the “o” sound at the end of a word of followed by a single consonant (the different phoneme combinations). Teacher will ask students to discover the pronunciation rule with the long and short vowel sound.
8. Teacher asks students to identify the parts of speech for each word such as noun, verb, adjective.

Shared Writing

9. Teacher will scribe definitions of words and sentences using the poem words from student input.
10. Each group of students, according to their definition of who or what mops is, will create a visual and decide on a voice intonation reflecting their interpretation of the poem.
11. Students will also create an additional line of the poem, which is mops reaction to the final line and following the pattern presented in the poem.
12. Groups will present their visual, voice intonation interpretation and shared writing to the class.

Assessment

Teacher will use a rubric that rates the pronunciation, effectiveness of intonation and the additional writing presented to the class. Teacher may also want to give points for creativity of presentation and usefulness of the visual created by the students for their presentation.

Also, suggest having the students do a peer rubric on the presentations.

Supplemental information

Comments

This lesson plan was created as a result of the June, 2004 Foreign Language Literacy Institute hosted by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. The lesson reflects certain reading methods introduced at this institute, specifically those that deal with Alphabet, Phoneme or Phonics Awareness, Shared Reading and Shared Writing.