This lesson plan aimed to teach secondary 2 special education students about table tennis rules through various activities. The objectives were for students to name Olympic games, understand and discuss table tennis rules, and use modal verbs to talk about sports rules. The lesson began with a sports crossword puzzle to activate prior knowledge. Students then learned table tennis vocabulary through a video and worksheet. They read about table tennis rules and answered comprehension questions. Activities included true/false questions before and after another video, and writing their favorite sport's rules using modal verbs. The teacher evaluated students' oral interactions during pair and group work.

1. LESSON PLAN
Table Tennis Rules
A. FACTUAL INFORMATION
• My name: Hui Ling Yang
• Day, date, and time of lesson: Monday, March 16, 2015, 10:00-11:15
• Grade and level of students: secondary 2, Special Education program
• Brief description of students: students of a adapt group, intermediate level, well-disciplined,
coming from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
B. OBJECTIVES AND PROBLEMS
• Topic area/theme: sports and rules
• General aim: The goal of the lesson is to create opportunities for students to practice
English in a meaningful way through oral interaction, reading and viewing activities. It also
aims to enrich students’ knowledge of sports by introducing to them a sport that they are not
familiar.
• Specific objective(s): By the end of this lesson, the learners will be able to say the names of
some Olympic games. They will also be able to understand and talk about the basic rules of
playing table tennis. Moreover, they will be able to discuss the rules of the sports they play.
• Evaluation criteria: Competency 1 Interact orally will be evaluated. The teacher will be
moving around in the classroom to evaluate students during their discussion time. Since
students have been learning modal verbs for a while, the teacher will pay special attention to
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2. students’ use of modal verbs. She will consider all four aspects of C1 evaluation which are
participation, pertinence, fluency and accuracy.
• Related content/essential knowledge:
– Functions: identification, interests, instructions
– Grammar/structure: the Modals (can, cannot, must, mustn’t, should, shouldn’t, )
– Vocabulary: sports, table tennis,
– Anticipated language: This is … That is…
I do/go/play + (sports).
You can(not)/ should (not)/ must…
• Anticipated problems and solutions: Students may go back to L1 when doing the crossword
puzzle. The teacher will remind them to speak English. Students may have difficulty
understanding some vocabulary of table tennis. The teacher will offer visual support.
Students may also have difficulty with answering the reading comprehension questions. The
teacher will provide them with explanation.
C. COMPETENCIES COVERED
• ESL-specific:
Competency #1: Interacts orally in English. Students discuss in pairs or groups and using
planning skills to complete the task.
- Key Features: engages in oral interaction, constructs meaning of the message, expands a
personal language repertoire, uses functional language
Competency #2: Reinvests understanding of texts
- Key Features: reads and views texts, uses prior knowledge, constructs meaning of texts,
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3. cooperates, carries out a reinvestment task
• Cross-Curricular: Competency #7 – Achieve his or her potential
Competency #8 – Cooperates with others.
Competency #9 – Communicates appropriately
D. MATERIALS AND AIDS
• Multimedia: Smartboard, computer, the Internet,
• Handouts: the sports crosswords puzzle (Appendix 1),
the table tennis vocabulary worksheet (Appendix 2),
the reading activity worksheet – Table Tennis Rules (Appendix 3),
the viewing activity worksheet – True or False Questions(Appendix 4),
the Rules of Your Favorite Sport worksheet(Appendix 5).
the Exit Slip (Appendix 6)
E. STRUCTURE OF THE LESSON
Activity
And
Timing
What does the teacher do?
What do the students
do?
Rationale
HOOK
15
minutes
1. The teacher asks the students
about how they spend their spare
time. She asks questions like
“Do you play basketball/ do
yoga/ go swimming? What
sport/activity are you good at?”
2. The teacher introduces the
crossword puzzle about sports.
The students work in
pairs to do the crossword
To activate
students’ prior
knowledge about
sports.
To arouse the
students’ interest in
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4. She invites the students to take
the challenge to complete the
puzzle in less than 10 minutes.
She checks the solution to the
puzzle with the whole class.
puzzle. learning and their
fighting spirit to
work positively.
To expand
students’ language
repertoire.
DEVELOP
-MENT
10
Minutes
20
minutes
1. The teacher introduces the sport
of table tennis by asking the
students to guess what sport she
is good at. She plays the video
clip for the students:
Top 10 craziest Table Tennis
Shot in 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=VF2MhlA9FMg
She uses the video clip to teach
the vocabulary (racket, paddle,
bat, referee, assistant, umpire,
table tennis, ping-pong ball, net,
court).
She asks the students to read the
text Table Tennis Rules,
The students watch the
video.
The students work on the
vocabulary handout: find
the right word from the
word bank for each
number.
The students work
individually for the
To prepare the
students for the
reading activity.
To develop the
students’ reading
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5. 10
Minutes
15
minutes
highlight the modal verbs in the
text and then answer the reading
comprehension questions.
She checks the answers with the
whole class.
2. The teacher asks the students to
do the True or False questions
about table tennis rules before
watching the video.
She plays the video for the
students : Table tennis basic
service rules
http://www.allabouttabletennis.c
om/rules-of-table-tennis.html
She asks the students to do the
True or False questions again.
3. The teacher asks the students to
discuss and write the rules of
their favorite sports.
She evaluates C1. She elicits the
evaluation criteria from students.
reading activity.
Students do the True or
False questions
individually.
The students work in
groups of 3 to discuss
the rules of their favorite
sports.
skills.
To encourage
students to be a
courageous
language learner
who is willing to
take risks.
To allow the
students to reinvest
their understanding
of sport rules and
use modal verbs.
CLOSURE
5
1. The teacher wraps up the class
by asking the students why are
rules needed in sports.
To emphasize the
importance of sport
rules.
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6. minutes 2. She asks the students to
complete the Exit Slip which
requires students to write three
rules of playing table tennis.
The students complete
the Exit Slip before
leaving the class.
To allow students
to reflect on what
they have learned
and develop their
ability to monitor
their own learning
process.
Appendix 1
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9. Appendix 2
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10. Appendix 3
Name_____________________________________Group_______Date______________
Table Tennis Rules
The rules of table tennis have been changed many times in recent years in relation to the service
law, but for a casual game of table tennis it remains very simple.
Start a game
Before you start a game, you'll need to decide who's going to serve first. If you're just playing a
game with friends, you can use whatever method you like to decide this, but the official rules of
table tennis say that it's decided by lot, usually by tossing a coin or disc having two distinct sides.
However, a common method used at lower levels of play is for one player (or the umpire) to hide
the ball in one hand, then put both hands under the table or behind his or her back, and then ask
the opponent to guess which hand the ball is in. Although the winner of this often serves first, he
does actually have three choices. The winner can elect to serve first or make his opponent serve
first or decide which end of the table he prefers to play at first.
Basic Rules
When you serve the ball, the ball must rest on an open hand palm. Then it must be tossed up at
least 6 inches. The ball must above the level of the playing surface and behind the server's end
line. As the ball is falling, you must hit it with your racket held in your playing hand so that it
bounces once on your side of the table, and at least once on your opponent's side of the table. If
you allow the ball to bounce more than once on your side of the table, you lose the point.
The ball may bounce anywhere on both sides of the table and, unlike tennis, you don't have to
serve to one part of the table - unless you're playing doubles. If the ball touches the net and still
bounces on your opponent's side of the table, the service must be replayed. However, if the ball
touches the net and does not bounce on your opponent's side of the table, you lose the point.
Equipment
The paddle should have a red and a black side. The ball should be either orange or white and 40
mm in size. Players should wear dark clothing as a contrast against the white and orange balls.
The table should be 2.74 meters long, 1.525 meters wide and 0.76 meters high. Players cannot
use the table for support or balance. If the player’s free hand touches the table or the net or if the
player moves the table, the player loses that point.
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11. Scoring
A match shall consist of the best 3 of 5 games (or 4/7 or 5/9). During a game, each player gets to
serve for two points in a row, and then the other player has to serve. For each game, the first
player to reach 11 points wins that game, however a game must be won by at least a two point
lead.
Answer the following questions about the text.
1. What is the common method used to decide who should serve the ball first in a game of table
tennis?
2. What can cause a player to lose a point? (3 examples)
3. How many games should a player win in order to win a match?
4. If a player wins a game with a point of 13, what is the point for his / her opponent?
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12. Appendix 4
Name_____________________________________Group_______Date______________
Viewing activity: Table Tennis Basic Service Rules
Decide True or False for the following statements.
1. When you serve the ball, you mustn’t hide it.
T / F T / F
2. You can throw the ball upwards, backwards or to the sides.
T / F T / F
3. When serving the ball, you must strike the ball when it is dropping.
T / F T / F
4. The ball should hit your side of the table and then go over the net.
T / F T / F
5. You can have another serve if you miss the ball.
T / F T / F
View the video and decide True or False for the statements above again.
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13. Appendix 5
Name__________________________________Group______Date____________
Write the rules of the sport you are good at with modal verbs.
_____________________________ Rules
1.________________________________________________________
_
2.________________________________________________________
_
3.________________________________________________________
_
4.________________________________________________________
_
__________________________________________________________
5.________________________________________________________
_
__________________________________________________________
6.________________________________________________________
_
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14. __________________________________________________________
7.________________________________________________________
_
Appendix 6
Exit Slip
Give me 3 rules of playing table tennis.
Exit Slip
Give me 3 rules of playing table tennis.
Exit Slip
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15. Give me 3 rules of playing table tennis.
Reflection on the Lesson Table Tennis Rules
Lesson description
The topic of this lesson was sports and rules. This lesson aimed to achieve three goals: 1) The
students would be able to name some Olympic games. 2) The students would be able to
understand and have conversations about the rules of table tennis. 3) The students would be able
to use modal verbs to discuss the rules of the sports they play. This lesson was given to a group
of students of special education. All the goals were met at the end of the class.
What did I do that worked well?
 I managed to engage the students by choosing topics that are relevant to them. We were
doing a unit about extreme sports which seemed interesting in the textbook. But, I found out
that most students had no personal experience of extreme sports so that there was not much
that they could do with this unit. So, I decided to switch to teach normal sports that students
play regularly. This shift connected the students’ lives to language learning and thus enabled
them to express their ideas in the target language more easily. When I asked the students the
questions like “How do you spend your spare time?”, “How often do you go swimming?”,
“How do you find about playing soccer?”, and “What are the rules of the sport you play?”,
they all had something to say. The relevant topics raised the level of students’ engagement
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16. greatly. Relevance is the key to meaningful learning.
 I maintained the students’ interest through a variety of activities during the course of the
lesson. The beginning hook activity was a crossword puzzle about the Olympic Games. I
invited the students to take the challenge to complete the puzzle in less than 5 minutes which
was the time I used. This invitation motivated the whole class to participate in the activity.
To introduce the learning content of this lesson - table tennis rules, I showed the students a
video clip of 10 craziest Table Tennis Shots. The video clip caught all students’ attention
because they were amazed by the high performance of the table tennis players in the video.
The video aroused the students’ interest to want to learn more about table tennis. Towards
the end, I carried out another activity to ask the students to use modal verbs to write and
speak about the sports they play. Since I knew several students in this group play sports for
the school teams and they had just won some matches, I complimented their sports skills and
called them the experts of their sports. This act boosted the students’ sense of pride, and they
became more interested in the activity.
 I provided plenty of comprehensible input before pushing the students to produce output. I
used the video clip mentioned above to teach vocabulary and then asked students to match
the vocabulary with the right pictures of table tennis. The reading of Table Tennis Rules
increased the students’ understanding of the learning content by requiring them to answer the
comprehension questions with their own words instead of copying exact sentences from the
texts. The viewing activity of How to Serve the Ball, in which the students needed to decide
if the statements about table tennis were true or false, deepened their learning of the use of
modal verbs. When the students were finally asked to write and speak about the rules of the
sports they play, they already received a lot of input they needed to produce something in the
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17. target language.
What do I still need to work on?
 I need to work on how to model activities rather than simply explaining activities. I was
focusing on practising giving clear and succinct instructions when giving students work to
do. I found out that oral instructions were not enough for some students in this group (This is
a special education group). For example, when I asked the students to do the crossword
puzzle of the Olympic Games, I assumed that the students all knew how to do it, so I only
explained what they needed to do. I should have done one example with the whole class and
written the word in the puzzle which was shown on the Smart-board. Some students were
confused by the viewing activity How to Serve the Ball. I asked the students to decide twice
if the statements were true or false, once before viewing the video to encourage them to take
risks when learning the target language and the second time after viewing. Despite my
explanation, they still didn’t understand why there were two T / Fs at the end of each
statement. I should have modeled how to do the true or false questions.
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