Unit 6: Effective Lesson Planning

 

In this unit, we're going to look at why lesson planning is so important, and introduce you to a lesson plan guide which will always work.

 

But first of all, a question:

 

1. Do you plan your lessons?

 

 

2. If you plan, how much time do you spend on planning?

 

 

3. And do you follow a particular method or system when planning?

 

 

 

Of course, as teachers, we all know it’s very easy not to plan a lesson. Time is tight, you’ve done the lesson before, you think you know what you’re doing. And anyway, the book is fine – it can do the lesson for you.

 

However, in reality, having a plan, even if it’s just the bare bones of a lesson, is really important to the success of your lesson. You need to know the following:

 

• what you’re going to teach your students – the language learning aims
• why you’re going to teach that language – how new language fits into the overall syllabus
• how you’re going to teach it – the tasks, activities, and materials you intend to use

 

And, therefore, what the students will have learned by the end of the class – the results of your teaching.

 

And even if you’re working from a course book, you need to be fully clear on what language points the book is focusing on, and how it’s asking you to teach them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Setting Your Aims   

 

1.Think of your last lesson. Write down what your students had learnt by the end of it.

 

 

2. Think of your next lesson. Write down what your students will have learnt by the end of it.

 

 

 

This section is about setting aims for your students, so you're clear on what they should be learning. Before you go into your next lesson, ask yourself the following 2 questions:

 

• What are my students going to learn from this lesson?
• What will they know in one hour, which they did not know before?

 

And check you know how the lesson fits in with the syllabus.

 

How to express your aims:

When stating your aims, don’t use general statements like, ‘At the end of this lesson, students will have better English’, or ‘They will learn some new words’. These are not very helpful, as they are very general and very difficult to test whether they have been achieved.

 

State your aims as specifically as possible. Focus on particular language points you want the students to be able to use. In this way you can really see whether your students have managed to learn what you hoped they would.

 

Some examples of specific aims:

• ‘By the end of this lesson, my students will have learnt to count to 10 in English.’
• ‘By the end of this lesson, my students will be able to talk about their future plans.’
• ‘By the end of this lesson, my students will be able to tell their friends what they ate last night.’

 

Also, there may be more than one aim per lesson. In the lesson, ‘‘By the end of this lesson, my students will be able to tell their friends what they ate last night,’ you might want to break it into 3 aims as follows:

 

Aim 1: My students will have revised their vocabulary of food and learnt some more items.

Aim 2: My students will be able to use the Past Simple to ask what their friends ate last night

Aim 3: My students will be able to say what they ate last night using the Past Simple

 

 

Here’s one of the questions from above – please answer it again. Please start with the phrase, ‘By the end of the lesson, my students will….’

 

1. Think of your next lesson. Write down what your students will have learnt by the end of it.

 

'By the end of the lesson, my students will.... _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .'

 

 

Please now write down the aims of your next 2 lessons after that in the same way.

 

a. 'By the end of the lesson, my students will.... _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .'

 

b. 'By the end of the lesson, my students will.... _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .'

 

 

3. Planning to achieve your aims

 

Great lesson plans are built on very simple structures. Here is a basic type that you can use for pretty much any lesson: 

 

1)       Starter – ‘warm up’

2)       Overview – sharing your aims

3)       Input – introducing the learning points

4)       Activity – practice work

5)       Review – checking everyone has learnt the target language

 

 

Starter – ‘warm up’

 

This could be a short game or puzzle, or a few questions which introduce the day’s lesson theme, or simply ‘What did we do last lesson?’. It should take no more than 10 minutes, and often less.

 

Whatever you do, a starter should:

• engage & motivate your students – get them thinking
• refresh some prior learning
• provide a sense of pace & challenge
• create the expectation that everyone will participate

 

Your starter is also a way of readjusting your students’ minds to a new lesson. They often need a little time to transition from wherever they have come from, and are not ready to learn straightaway. A short ‘warmer’ is a perfect way for your students to cross that mental bridge and prepare to do some proper learning.

 

 

Overview – sharing your aims

 

This is where you tell your students what they’re going to learn.

 

This may sound a little strange, but it’s a great way of getting the students motivated. It takes 30 seconds, and they can really see that you’ve prepared the lesson, that there is something specific to learn, and that they’re going to make progress.

 

This super easy to do. Look at your students, and say, ‘Today we’re going to learn to count to 10 in English’ or, ‘Today we’re going to learn how to talk about your future plans.’

 

Then smile. 

 

 

Input – introducing the learning points

 

It’s in this section that you introduce the learning points you want to cover. This links directly with what you’ve just told your students you will do, so they are already prepared for it.

 

There are lots of ways of introducing your students to new information. You could ask them to read a few sentences and then work out the common grammatical point. They could read a text and then guess the meaning of some words. They could listen to someone talking and see how a certain sound is pronounced. You could play a game which shows how to give instructions to someone else.

 

These are just some examples. For many more, you will need to look at some of the other units. In particular those focusing on teaching grammar and vocabulary in Section C, ‘Teaching English Language Awareness’ and those on teaching language skills in Section D, ‘Teaching The Four Skills’.

 

 

Activity – practice work

 

This is where you engage your students with the language so they can make sense of it, see how it works in practice, and use it themselves.

 

As with introducing new language, there are many many ways of practising it – roleplays, matching exercises, puzzles, filling gaps, drawing pictures, problem solving, finding differences, answering questions, brainstorming, playing games, etc.

 

Again, these are all detailed out in relevant units, many of them in Section C and Section D. Here you will find lists of grammar and vocabulary practice activities, as well as activities which improve specific language skills, such as speaking or writing.

 

 

Review – checking everyone has learnt

 

In the last 5 or 10 minutes of your lesson, it’s a great idea to see whether your students have understood what you wanted them to.

 

Here, you should ask your students to demonstrate the language you aimed for. This can be done in different ways, such as:

 

• give them a short test
• ask them to explain something to the class
• ask them to explain something to each other and listen to what they say
• ask them to create a sentence about their lives using the target language
• ask them if they have achieved the aim you set out near the beginning of the class

 

You will also see what they haven’t understood, and therefore what further work needs doing.

 

Conclusion

 

Planning your lessons is critical to their success. It puts you in the driving seat and give your lesson purpose and direction. Your students will only appreciate this.

 

Try this out for your next lesson. Look at what the aims should be and then work out how you will achieve those aims. If you're working with a coursebook, this should reflect what the book is asking you and the students to do. Write down your 5 stage plan following the scheme above:

 

1)       Starter – ‘warm up’

2)       Overview – sharing your aims

3)       Input – introducing the learning points

4)       Activity – practice work

5)       Review – checking everyone has learnt the target language

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps 2 example plans would be useful here - or at least specific references to other plans in secetions C & D which follow this pattern