Keeping in Touch

Content Objectives

Students will:

• Learn about the concept of keeping in touch.
• Access prior knowledge and build background about language and communication.
• Explore and apply the concepts of the history of communication and the differences between written and spoken communication.

Language Objectives

Students will:

• Demonstrate an understanding of keeping in touch as a set of different ways to use language.
• Examine the history and structure of language.
• Extend oral vocabulary by speaking about the difference devices and forms of language use.
• Use key concept words [communicating, anthropologist, linguist, language, symbols, cave drawings, hieroglyphiscs, alphabet].

Other

Explain

• Use the slideshow to review the key concept words.
• Explain that students are going to learn about keeping in touch:
• Why do we keep in touch with people?
• What sort of things do you usually talk about with someone you're keeping in touch with?
• What is the difference between written and spoken communication?
• What kinds of scientists study communication?

Model

• After the host introduces the slideshow, point to the photo on screen. Ask students: What are some ways you can keep in touch with somone? (writing letters, calling someone on the phone, e• mail, etc.)
• Ask students: Who do people usually keep in touch with? (friends who move away, relatives who don't live close by, former teachers, etc.)
• Say: Sometimes people move to new places, jobs, or schools, so keeping in touch allows them to maintain the relationships that they have made. You can keep in touch by writing a letter or an email or making a phone call. What are some early terms of communication that people don't often use anymore? (cave drawings, hieroglyphics, etc.)

Guided Practice

• Guide students through the next five slides showing them various methods of communication and keeping in touch. Always have the students discuss which method they use most often and the pros and cons of each method.

Apply

• Play the games that follow. Have them discuss with their partner the different topics that appear during the Talk About It feature.
• After the first game, ask students to name people in their lives that they keep in touch with. After the second game, encourage them to talk about how they keep in touch and what they talk about with those people.

Close

• Ask students: Are there any people that you don't keep in touch with that you would like to get in contact with?
• Summarize for students that keeping in touch helps our friends and family know what is going on. Keeping touch also helps people to maintain relationships for long periods of time. Encourage students to imagine that they are 10 years older and live in a different town. Have them write a letter to one of their friends from today that they would like to keep in touch with when they're older.