Connection-based Instructional Design Of Teach A Man To Fish

The connection-based instructional design is concerned with Teach a Man to Fish in Unit One, Module Ten in Advance with English. Its theoretical bases are connectionism and meaningful learning theory. The significance of this instructional design lies in two aspects:facilitating the students’grasp of Teach a Man to Fish by connecting every step and helping to raise the students’awareness of connection when reading or writing an article.This instructional design is composed of three parts:pre-design analyses of its major elements, design of teaching process and post-design reflections.Pre-design analyses of its major elements include analyses of learners, teaching contents and teaching objectives. In terms of learners, most of Senior3science students in an ordinary high school are those who are interested in math and physics with a poor knowledge of English. They have logic thinking ability but little interest in English. In terms of teaching contents, the teacher chooses Teach a Man to Fish, which can serve the purpose of the connection-based instructional design. In terms of teaching objectives, language skills, affective factors and thinking ability are analyzed. The language skills in this instructional design focus on close reading; the affective factors involve arousing students’interest by connecting the teaching process of Teach a Man to Fish and increasing their self-confidence by discussion; and the students’ thinking ability is trained with a focus on connection.The specific design of teaching process consists of five steps. Step One:Lead-in with a focus on connection between the unit title Building the Future and the text title Teach a Man to Fish, to be more specific, with the unit title Building the Future as an end and the text title Teach a Man to Fish as a means to realize it; Step Two:Close reading with a focus on connection the text title Teach a Man to Fish and the text organization; Step Three:Close reading with a focus on connection between paragraphs in terms of Problem-Solution-Evaluation pattern; Step Four:Close reading with a focus on connection within paragraphs in terms of cohesion and coherence; and Step Five:Assignment with a focus on the connection with real life. Reflections on the instructional design involve reflections on teaching objectives, reflections on design of teaching process and revised instructional design. In terms of teaching objectives, they are generally accomplished, which can be shown in three aspects. The first aspect is about language skills, to be more specific, students could grasp the text through close reading with different focuses; the second aspect is about affective factors, which can arouse the students’interest and have more confidence in learning English. The third one is about thinking ability:learning to think in the way of connection to lay a foundation for their future study. In terms of design of teaching process, the instructional design as a whole is successful except for some minor problems, such as dull lead-in part, difficulty with analyzing the structure of PSE and their small linking vocabulary in writing the composition.Based on these reflections, three revisions are made in the instructional design. The first revision is adding some pictures and videos to attract the students’attention; the second revision, just dividing the text into two parts (Part One:Problem&solution; Part Two:Evaluation) the and letting the students analyze the problem, the short-term and long-term solutions in the first part to avoid the vague structure in this part; and third revision, providing the students with some linking words and expressions so that it would be easier for them to do their writing assignments.