必修四Unit 2 Working the land教案（集體備課）

s: i never grow any plant. i’d like to plant sunflowers. they look beautiful. they always face the sun when they are young. i dig some holes in my garden, put some sunflower seeds in them, water them and finally cover them with some more soil.
t: very well. have you ever been to the countryside? what did you do there?
s5: yes, i went there to see my grandfather. in the village i played with other boys in the little stream and caught little fish. i even helped my grandfather get in the corn by cutting the corn stems, which made me tired.
t: are you from a farmer’s family? what do you know about farming?
s: yes, my father is a farmer. in my view, farming is hard work. people have to plant crops, smooth away weeds and get in the crops at the right time. they have to get up early to work in the field so as to protect themselves from the sunshine.
t: that’s right. in the north, the biggest worry that farmers have is the drought. when it doesn’t rain, and they can’t irrigate the crops, the crops will die and they will have nothing after hard working.

step ⅲ  pre-reading
the purpose of this step is to let students know the importance of rice. by answering the two questions, students can easily understand why we call dr yuan longping a pioneer for all people, and why  he devotes all his life to the rice research.   
t: food is the basic need for man. rice is a main food in all eastern asian and southeastern asian countries. it is said that there are 2.4 billion people to eat rice everyday throughout the world. what do you think would happen if tomorrow there was suddenly no rice to eat?
s: i think if that happened, people there would suffer from starvation. they would be panic and the whole country would get into trouble. maybe the situation that human beings eat human beings will happen.
t: that’s too terrible. but this kind of thing once happened in history. well, if you had the chance to do one thing to help end famine in the world, what would you do?
s: i would invent a new kind of plant to produce more food.
s:  i’ll make a kind of fertilizer to give rice enough nutrition and let them grow quickly and have high product. but first without pollution to our environment.
t: a great idea! your idea is just the same with dr yuan longping. do you know yuan longping?
s: i heard that he is an expert on agriculture.
t: yeah, today we are going to read a passage about him. let’s see how he helped the world to solve the problem- starvation. please open your books to page 9.