Unit 5 Education-Lesson 1 Enlightening a Mind 教案-2025-2026学年高中英语北师大版选择性必修第二册

Language Competence: Master key words and sentence patterns, understand the narrative logic of the text about Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.

Cultural Awareness: Comprehend the value of education and the spirit of perseverance across cultures.

Thinking Quality: Develop logical and critical thinking through text analysis and discussion.

Learning Ability: Cultivate autonomous and cooperative learning skills in reading and expression.

Key Points: Understand the main plot and character traits, master key vocabulary (e.g., relate, puzzle, disappointed) and sentence structures (e.g., have/get something done).

Difficult Points: Infer the implied meaning of the text, analyze the educational wisdom in Anne’s teaching and express personal views on education.

The teaching process is designed around the theme of “Enlightening a Mind” and focuses on the development of students’ four-dimensional core literacy. It is carried out in the order of “Lead-in → Pre-reading → While-reading → Post-reading → Summary and Homework”, with various interactive activities to ensure students’ active participation and in-depth understanding of the text.

Lead-in

The lead-in aims to activate students’ prior knowledge, arouse their interest in the topic, and lay a foundation for the subsequent text learning. First, the teacher shows a picture of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan on the screen, and asks two guiding questions: “Do you know this famous woman? What do you know about her?” Students are invited to share their existing knowledge of Helen Keller, such as her disability, her achievements, and her teacher Anne Sullivan. The teacher supplements and summarizes briefly, emphasizing that Helen Keller, a deaf and blind girl, achieved extraordinary accomplishments under the guidance of Anne Sullivan, and this lesson will explore how Anne enlightened Helen’s mind and changed her life.

Then, the teacher presents some key words related to the text, such as “deaf”, “blind”, “teacher”, “enlighten”, “perseverance”, and asks students to predict the main content of the text based on these words and the picture. This activity not only activates students’ vocabulary reserve but also cultivates their predictive ability, making them more focused on the text content in the subsequent reading.

Pre-reading

In the pre-reading stage, the focus is on helping students solve vocabulary and background obstacles, so that they can read the text smoothly. First, the teacher introduces the background of the text briefly: The text is adapted from Helen Keller’s autobiography “The Story of My Life”, which tells the process of Anne Sullivan teaching Helen Keller to read and speak, showing the power of education and the spirit of perseverance. This background introduction helps students understand the context of the text and deepen their emotional perception.

Next, the teacher explains the key vocabulary and sentence structures in the text. For vocabulary, the teacher focuses on explaining words that are crucial for understanding the text, such as “relate to” (relate to), “puzzle” (confuse), “disappoint” (disappoint), “superb” (excellent), “straightforward” (simple and direct), “tendency” (tendency), etc. For each word, the teacher provides example sentences combined with the text context to help students understand its meaning and usage. For example, when explaining “relate to”, the teacher quotes the sentence from the text: “She’d had eyesight problems early in

life as well so she could relate to Helen's difficulties.”, and explains that it means “understand and share the feelings of others”. For sentence structures, the teacher focuses on the structure “have/get something done”, such as “Helen's parents got a superb teacher recommended to them” and “she needed to have everything done for her”, explaining its usage and helping students master how to use it to express “asking others to do something”.

After the vocabulary and sentence structure explanation, the teacher organizes a small group activity: students work in groups of 4 to discuss the question “If you were a teacher, how would you teach a deaf and blind child?”, and each group selects a representative to share their ideas. This activity not only exercises students’ oral expression ability but also makes them think about the difficulty of Anne’s teaching, laying a foundation for understanding Anne’s educational wisdom in the text.

 While-reading

The while-reading stage is the core part of the teaching process, aiming to help students understand the text in depth, master the main plot, character traits and text structure, and develop their reading ability. This stage is divided into three parts: fast reading, careful reading and deep reading.

Fast Reading

The teacher asks students to read the text quickly and complete two tasks: First, find out the main characters of the text (Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan) and the main event (Anne Sullivan teaches Helen Keller to learn language and enlightens her mind). Second, divide the text into three parts according to the plot and summarize the main idea of each part. After students finish reading, the teacher invites several students to share their answers, and then summarizes the text structure: Part 1 (Paragraphs 1-2): Introduce Helen’s situation before Anne’s arrival—she was deaf and blind, unable to communicate, and her behavior was unbearable; Part 2 (Paragraphs 3-10): Describe the process of Anne teaching Helen to learn language, including teaching “doll”, “water”, “love” and “think”; Part 3 (Paragraph 11): The result of Anne’s teaching—Helen understood the world of words and gained hope and joy.

This fast reading activity helps students grasp the overall framework of the text quickly, cultivate their ability to obtain the main information, and lay a foundation for in-depth reading.

Careful Reading

On the basis of fast reading, the teacher asks students to read the text carefully and complete the following tasks in groups: Task 1: Fill in the table about the process of Anne teaching Helen to learn words, including the words taught, the teaching methods and Helen’s feelings. Task 2: Analyze the character traits of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan based on the details in the text, and find out the supporting sentences. Task 3: Underline the sentences that reflect the changes of Helen’s mood and analyze the reasons for the changes.

After students finish the tasks, the teacher organizes a class discussion to check the answers and deepen students’ understanding. For Task 1, the teacher guides students to sort out the teaching process: When teaching “doll”, Anne let Helen play with the doll first, then spelled “D-O-L-L” on her hand, and Helen thought it was a game at first; when teaching “water”, Anne put Helen’s hand under the stream and spelled “W-A-T-E-R” on her other hand, which made Helen suddenly realize the connection between the finger movements and the real thing; when teaching “love” and “think”, Anne used patient guidance to help Helen understand these abstract concepts. For Task 2, the teacher summarizes the character traits: Helen Keller is stubborn, eager to learn and persistent; Anne Sullivan is patient, intelligent, empathetic and responsible. The teacher asks students to read the supporting sentences aloud to deepen their understanding, such as “She was sometimes troublesome, stubborn and angry, and had a tendency to break things when no one understood her” reflects Helen’s stubbornness, and “Anne’s technique to teach Helen language was simple and straightforward” reflects Anne’s intelligence. For Task 3, the teacher guides students to find out the sentences reflecting Helen’s mood changes: from “unbearable behavior” “angry” to “excited” when learning “doll”, then to “full of hope and joy” when understanding “water”, and finally to “eager to learn