Unit 5 Education-Lesson 3 Understanding 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 expressions, understand the argumentative text structure.

Cultural Awareness: Learn the spirit of pursuing truth from great scientists.

Thinking Quality: Develop critical thinking and logical induction.

Learning Ability: Improve cooperative learning and autonomous reading skills.

Key Points: Grasp core vocabulary and sentence structures, understand the methods of acquiring knowledge and the text’s main ideas.

Difficult Points: Analyze the argumentative writing features and express personal views on knowledge acquisition in English.

The teaching process is carried out around the concept of "student-centered, theme-led, and competency-oriented", following the logical sequence of "Lead-in → Pre-reading → While-reading → Post-reading → Summary and Homework", integrating the four-dimensional key competencies into each link, and guiding students to deeply understand the theme of "understanding and acquiring knowledge".

Lead-in

To arouse students’ interest and connect their prior knowledge with the lesson theme, the lead-in activity is designed to be interactive and situational. First, the teacher asks open questions to guide students to think and express: “How do you usually acquire knowledge in daily life? Do you always believe what the authorities or books tell you? Have you ever doubted a common view and tried to find the truth by yourself?” These questions are closely related to students’ daily learning and life, making it easy for them to participate in the discussion actively.

Then, the teacher shows a short video clip about Galileo’s experiment on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which briefly introduces how Galileo challenged the traditional view of Aristotle and proved the law of free fall through experiments. After watching the video, the teacher asks follow-up questions: “What do you think of Galileo’s behavior? Why is it important to doubt and explore?”, guiding students to initially realize the significance of pursuing truth and scientific exploration. Finally, the teacher naturally leads to the topic of the lesson: “Today, we will learn a passage titled Understanding, which will tell us how to acquire knowledge and achieve true understanding, and show us the spirit of great scientists in pursuing truth.” This lead-in activity not only stimulates students’ learning interest but also lays a foundation for the cultivation of cultural awareness and thinking quality, and guides students to enter the theme of the lesson actively.

Pre-reading

The pre-reading stage aims to help students remove language barriers, predict the text content, and lay a solid foundation for in-depth reading. It mainly includes two parts: vocabulary preview and text prediction.

In the vocabulary preview link, the teacher focuses on the core vocabulary and phrases related to the theme of the text, such as analysis, inefficient, primitive, assumption, civilization, acquire knowledge, challenge authority, seek truth, and verify answers. The teacher presents these words and phrases in context: for example, “Francis Bacon advocated that people should acquire knowledge through practice and analysis, not just rely on assumptions.” “Galileo dared to challenge authority and verify his ideas through experiments.” By combining the context of the lesson, students can not only remember the spelling and meaning of the words but also understand their usage in specific situations, which helps improve their language competence. At the same time, the teacher encourages students to guess the meaning of new words according to word formation and context, cultivating their autonomous learning ability.

In the text prediction link, the teacher asks students to look at the title “Understanding” and the pictures in the textbook

(such as the portraits of Francis Bacon and Galileo), and predict the main content of the passage. The teacher guides students to put forward their predictions: “What do you think the passage will talk about? Will it introduce the methods of understanding the world? Or will it tell stories of scientists who pursued understanding?” After students express their opinions freely, the teacher summarizes their predictions and tells them: “Let’s read the passage to check whether your predictions are correct, and find out the methods of acquiring knowledge and the spirit of the scientists mentioned in the passage.” This link not only trains students’ ability to predict text content but also mobilizes their learning initiative, laying a foundation for the while-reading stage.

While-reading

The while-reading stage is the core part of the teaching process, aiming to guide students to read the text in layers, grasp the main content, analyze the text structure, and understand the author’s views, so as to improve their language competence and thinking quality. This stage is divided into three parts: fast reading, careful reading, and deep reading.

First, fast reading. The teacher asks students to read the passage quickly, skip the new words that do not affect understanding, and complete two tasks: 1. Divide the passage into three parts and summarize the main idea of each part; 2. Find out the key sentence that expresses the author’s core view. After reading, students are invited to share their answers. The teacher corrects and summarizes: The first part (Paragraph 1) introduces the correct way to acquire knowledge and understand the world: putting forward questions, observing and researching facts to find answers, and thinking and verifying answers. The second part (Paragraphs 2-3) takes Francis Bacon and Galileo as examples to illustrate how great men used scientific methods to break through traditional ideas and pursue truth. The third part (Paragraphs 4-5) points out that human understanding of the world is constantly growing and changing, and we should always keep the spirit of exploring and pursuing knowledge. The key sentence of the passage is: “The process of understanding the world around us is a never-ending journey, and it requires courage, curiosity and perseverance.” Through fast reading, students can quickly grasp the overall structure and core content of the text, training their fast reading ability and logical induction ability.

Second, careful reading. On the basis of fast reading, the teacher guides students to read the text carefully, focusing on the details and key information, and completes the following tasks to deepen their understanding of the text. Task 1: Read Paragraph 1 carefully and fill in the blanks about the steps of acquiring knowledge: First, we need to ______; then, to find answers, we ______; after that, we ______. Task 2: Read Paragraphs 2-3 carefully and complete the table about Francis Bacon and Galileo: their views on acquiring knowledge, the traditional views they challenged, and their contributions. Task 3: Underline the key sentences in each paragraph and analyze their functions (such as topic sentences, supporting sentences, and concluding sentences). During the process, the teacher walks around the classroom, answers students’ questions in time, and guides students to find key information from the text. After completing the tasks, the teacher organizes students to exchange and discuss their answers, and makes comments and supplements. For example, when analyzing the views of Bacon and Galileo, the teacher emphasizes: “Bacon believed that knowledge comes from practice and observation, while Galileo insisted on verifying ideas through experiments. Both of them dared to challenge the traditional authority and pursue the truth bravely, which is worth learning from.” This link not only helps students grasp the details of the text and master the key vocabulary and sentence structures but also lets them feel the spirit of the scientists, laying a foundation for the cultivation of cultural awareness.

Third, deep reading. On the basis of careful reading, the teacher guides students to conduct in-depth analysis and thinking, focusing on the argumentative features of the text and the author’s writing purpose, so as to develop their critical thinking ability. The teacher puts forward the following questions for students to discuss in groups: 1. What is the author’s purpose of writing this passage? 2. How does the author support his view? (Hint: the use of examples) 3. Do you agree with the author’s view that “our understanding of the world is constantly growing and changing”? Why or why not? 4. What can we learn from Bacon and Galileo in terms of acquiring knowledge and pursuing truth? After group discussion, each group