The Current Phase:
Lesson planning for some teachers is the most tedious part
of teaching. However experienced teachers are of the opinion
that the more detailed a plan the smoother is the execution
of that plan. In this phase the important parts of a lesson
and how to write effective lesson plans are dealt with.
Phase
5 - Lesson Planning
Lesson
Plan
A
good lesson needs good planning. Your lesson plans ensure
that several things happen in your lesson:
Six
of the strongest reasons as to why you should create an
ESL lesson plan to make your classes a success.
1. You have a definite language point to
teach. Your lesson plan should be based
around one language point.
2. What games and activities you are going
to use. Certain activities work for some
language points, but not others. Make sure
your games are also age/level appropriate.
3. Your ESL lesson should have a purpose,
it should keep building. Your students will
be lost if your lesson jumps from here to
there as they won't be able to follow where
you are going.
4. A lesson plan acts as a warning against
possible difficulties in teaching the new
language, such as pronunciation. Because
you have your lesson plan, you can allocate
extra time or find great activity that helps
to overcome the problem.
5. Creating lesson plans saves you time.
Because you will likely teach the same lesson
more than once, you can use your lesson
plan over and over again.
6. Using lesson plans generally mean that
you are following the same pattern for all
your lessons. This helps to let your students
know what's coming next, so they can focus
more or learning and not what is going to
happen next.
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What to include in a successful lesson plan
Ok, so, you?ve decided that creating a lesson plan for
your classes is a good idea. Now what? A lesson plan can't
include just about anything – it basically tells
you what to teach and how to do it!
Following
three steps are mandatory
-
Objective: What to achieve
-
Aids: To facilitate teaching. For example:
flash cards, worksheets, songs, poems and
black board are a few aids that are effective.
- Time:
The time frame has to be kept in mind while
doing any activity
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Also the above three steps are pointless without the four
essential elements that are never left out of a good lesson
plan:
-
a warmer
-
new language
-
review
-
and fun!..
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Warmer
– A warmer is so important because it sets the mood
for the rest of the lesson. Warmers are essential because
they help your students:
-
To relax and feel comfortable in the classroom
-
Have fun
-
Realize that “everyone is in the same
boat”
-
Learn a little about you and their classmates
-
Gain confidence
-
Get a feel of how the rest of the class
will be like
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New
Language – This is what your lesson plan
is based around and will take up the majority of the lesson.
Introducing new language follows three main steps:
-
Introduction – This
is where you explain the new language. It's
important that you try to elicit as much
of the language as possible.
-
Practice – This is
where the language is “drilled”
into the students through repetition. This
step contains teacher controlled drills.
-
Application – This
is where students now get to use the language
they've just learnt in a fun and interesting
way. This activity should allow as much
student to student interaction as possible.
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In
summary, a new language should:
-
Be introduced with a concept that the students
will understand and without, where possible,
referring to the written word.
-
Be elicited from the students, where possible.
-
Follow a structured presentation method
so that your students can follow where you
are going. Allow for as much student to
student interactivity as possible.
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Review/follow up – helps your students
to retain the language they learnt in the last lesson.
Essentially it should be:
-
Fun
-
Short (roughly 5-10 minutes, depending on
how long your lesson is)
-
As student orientated as possible, i.e.
the teacher should have minimal involvement.
-
In your follow-up activity the students
should be in the driver's seat.
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Fun
– Although not an actual “step” in your
lesson plan, fun should be incorporated in as much of
the lesson as possible. Here's why:
-
Your students will show a greater willingness
to learn if they are having fun.
-
Your students will be better behaved because
they are not bored.
-
Greater participation leads to greater language
retention, which makes you look better!
-
Better word of mouth - the more fun your
lessons are, the more likely word will spread
about how great a teacher you are!
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These
are the core of your lesson plan. In the next section
we?ll take a look at some great tips to enhance your lessons.
We
can divide lesson planning into three stages:
-
Long term – for the whole term.
-
Short term – for a unit of work
-
One class – for individual lesson
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Long
term planning:
1.
The planning begins either at the beginning
or the end of the term .
2. The contents or the text can be changed
or the order can be altered if needed.
3. The activities, topics , subjects taught
should be common to al teachers.
4. Materials to be used can also be planned
and prepared.
5. Sample of a Long term lesson plan without
a book:
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Age
3 to 6
Term
1 |
Class |
Period
per week: 3 |
Total
no. of classes: |
Month
January
February
March |
Topic
to be covered
My school
My Teacher
The body |
My
friend
My birthday
Food |
My
parents
My calendar
Clothes |
Short
term planning:
-
Short term planning may be a plan for
one week, one unit or one topic.
-
Decide what language item you are going
to teach and how you are going to teach.
-
Evaluation is a part of teaching, so write
evaluation into your plan at this stage.
-
Remember the plan is a rough guide to
show where you are going and what you
hope to cover.
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Age 10 to 12 years
Sample
of a short term lesson plan:
Week
Date:
|
Level: |
No
of classes: |
Language
Topic: |
Language
Structure |
Method
and Aids Used |
Activities |
Remarks |
4
weeks |
Beginners
|
12 |
Expressing
about Cartoon Characters |
Favourite
phrases
by the characters |
Audio
Visual Clips , comic strips |
One
act play , pair interview with the super hero |
Comments
on whether objectives were met. if not then reasons |
Taking
your lessons to the next level.
In this section we?ll take a look at ways that you can
improve you basic lesson plan. These tips can help your
good lessons become great lessons! These tips, by themselves,
cannot make a lesson plan. You should always use the steps
outlined in the previous section to build the foundation
of your lesson plan, these tips are like the sizzle to
the sausage!
There are several considerations to take into account
when developing your lesson content. Here are the main
things that you should consider:
- Age
– How old are your students? Are your activities
appropriate for the age that you are teaching?
- Ability/level
– What do your students already know? Are
you building a foundation of knowledge or just
teaching a bit from here and there?
- Classroom
environment – What resources are available
to you? How many students are there? How big is
the classroom? Can you take the students outside
if you need to?
- Sensitive
topics – Be aware that as it is most likely
that you will be teaching to students from a different
culture to your own, they may have different values
and beliefs to you.
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To
build a lesson plan we need to know about lesson framework
Lesson
Frameworks
Lesson frameworks are lesson sequences that can
be built on and modified as appropriate for different
classes. They are a sequence of behaviors and choreographies
that work as a stand-alone lesson, although they are not
intended as a prescription. They are intended to meet
the following criteria:
-
Language presented in contexts meaningful to the
students
-
Modeling to controlled practice to more communicative
practice activity
-
Variation in the modeling and practice activity
-
Remodeling target language in different modes
– spoken dialogues, listening, reading
-
Building on core materials – i.e. minimal
vocabulary initially, expanded as the lesson progresses
-
Maximizing student to student interaction
-
Modeling language first as audio input and then
as reading
-
Integrated skills development – listening,
speaking, reading & writing
-
Grammar in context as focus upon form, or highlighting
grammatical features
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Lesson
frameworks are hardly a new idea, and are basically what
are found in most classroom texts. They are a suggestion,
but a suggestion inviting modification and adaptation
to meet the needs of the teacher, the students and the
curriculum in any given situation.
To
some extent, lesson frameworks plus the lesson contexts
found in this book are an alternative to a textbook. It
would be possible for the teacher, and possibly the students,
to construct their own text choosing the contexts and
frameworks that best suited their purposes. This not a
novel idea, and might provide a feasible alternative for
classes who find commercial texts difficult to adapt to
their needs.
The
frameworks are presented as a minimal lesson plan that
includes a column for the “ target language,”
and a column for “process.
Language |
Process |
This
column will define the target language either as
written or as a reference to a page in a text. Obviously,
the target language is a `sample' to make the lesson
sequence and process clear. The teacher must substitute
the appropriate language for their students |
Process
will be a brief sequence of steps for teaching the
target language. These are
suggested steps and might be varied or modified
according to the teacher's and the students? needs. |
Few examples of effective aids that one can use in a lesson
plan
• Games
• Worksheets
Why
use games? Besides being fun, why is it a good
idea to use games?
•
They provide a lot a language repetition.
• They help to consolidate language points/vocabulary
However,
not all games are good for all classes, when choosing
games you should consider:
•
Age/level appropriateness – Will the students be
able to understand the game and even enjoy it?
• Safety – Don?t risk your student?s safety
for the sake of a fun lesson.
• Number of students – Some games only work
with a certain number of students
Why
should you use worksheets in the classroom?
•
Worksheets help to consolidate learning as well as providing
an opportunity for student to student interactivity.
• They can also help you gauge how well a student
is doing as you never know what kind of “help”
they?ve received at home with their homework.
Does
it flow?
•
The whole point of a lesson plan is so that at any point
in your lesson you can quickly glance at where you're
up to and know what's coming up next. If you can't make
sense of it, then you've wasted your time on a worthless
lesson plan and possibly the student's time by planning
a poor lesson.
• Lesson plans take the guess work out of calculating
the length of your lessons. This allows you to include
as much of the content as you had intended
A
day at the beach |
Age
level : 8 to 10 years (beginners)
Objective : Vocabulary expansion , recognition
of phonics, speaking skills
Aids : Song , Flash cards , Sea
shells , role play .
Lesson
1: Introduction to the beach
Vocabulary Taught: wave, ocean,
sand, sand castle, sea-shell, beach
Phonics taught: s-a-n-d,s-h-e-l-ls,c-r-a-b-s,w-a-v-e-s,b-e-a-c-h-
Aids: Flashcards, sea shells (if
available), paint (if you are going to use the “Sea
Shells” activity), “Ice-cream song”
if desired, paper for drawing your family at the
beach.
Time: About an hour, depending
on class size.
Activity: Paint Sea Shells or Draw
your family at the beach with family members
Possible sentence structures for this lesson:
1. What is it? It's a sea shell.
Warmer: Ice-cream song/any song
related to the beach
Duration
: 5minutes
Objective
:
•
To set the context
• To make learning fun
Introduction:
10 minutes
Objective
:
• Introduce and drill the new vocabulary.
Procedure
:
•
Use a big picture of a beach and introduce and drill
the new vocabulary.
• Get the students to draw each part of the
beach according to the words pointed out by the
teacher.
•
Get the students to hold up their pictures and encourage
them to say two sentences about it .
Follow
up activity: 20 minutes.
•
Today's activity: Painting Sea shells or draw your
family at the beach. If you have sea shells, or
you can get them easily, children usually enjoy
painting sea shells. It gives them something that
they can touch and take home at the end of the day.
• If you don't have any sea shells then get
your students to draw a picture of
themselves, their friends and their family at the
beach.
Phonics: 5 minutes s-a-n-d: Drill
phonic values.
Fun
activity: 5-7 minutes Themes –
give the students a theme and play
The animals theme always works well
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Frame work of a lesson plan
Teacher:
Lesson no.
Duration: Level:
No. of students:
Date:
Topic:
Context
Final
Objective: What will they be able to
do at the end…………. How……..and
about what.
Qualifying
Objectives: What
will they be able to do during or at the end of
each stage of the lesson.
1.
2.
3…..
Aids
or materials used:
Vocabulary taught:
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Teacher’s
Activity |
Students’
Activity |
Anticipated
Difficulties |
Assignment
1.
Read the following statements:
Teacher 1: “I plan my lesson in great details before
I enter the class and adhere to it”
Teacher 2: “I walk in to the class and do what my
students need to do.”
Which
statement do you agree with? Why? (70 words)
2.
Label the following as „aims" and „activities":
o Speak about their weekend to another student.
o Generate interest in the topic.
o Complete the text by filling in the gaps.
o Reading for specific information.
o Integrate listening and speaking.
o Look at picture prompts and repeat using the present
continuous.
3.
Use the above format to write one sample lesson plan.
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