HOW TO BEGIN PLANNING
The best way to provide a well-balanced, useful and interesting lesson is by avoiding teaching the unit in a book or material exactly as it is offered in either the book or the handouts. Instead, teachers should always follow SRAS:
- Select parts of the book or materials that will help achieve the aim/objective of the lesson.
- Reject parts of the book or materials that are irrelevant.
- Adapt the lesson plan to create a well-staged lesson by considering the age, proficiency levels, backgrounds, size of class, and students’ needs.
- Supplement your LP/course book with materials that will be more focused on target language/grammar/topic etc.; include a variety of controlled/less controlled activities; have an appropriate warm up and tune in; enhance the presentation/practice and production method.
1. VARIETY, SEQUENCING, PACING AND TIMING
Include a variety of controlled and less controlled activities in each lesson such as TPR, games, role playing etc.
Ensure each exercise or task is placed in the correct order beginning with easier task to progressing to more challenging ones. This allows a better flow to your lesson.
Activities should neither be too long nor too short, nor should you have your students paired up throughout the lesson. Allow some exercises for individual, pair and group work.
The entire lesson should be timed accordingly.
2. GAUGING DIFFICULTY
Be aware of the level of your students when designing lessons and activities. Make sure material is appropriate to your students’ proficiency levels.
3. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
It is important to elicit from slower/lower level students the easier questions, and more difficult questions from higher level ones. This way everyone gets a chance to participate and provide the correct answer and learners’ motivation and confidence increases.
Remember even if your students don’t have the answer, do not give up on them, but help them volunteer the correct answer by providing clues. This way the student feels like he/she put the effort into obtaining the answer and will most likely remember the process.
4. STUDENT TALK AND TEACHER TALK
There should be more teacher talk at the beginning of the lesson with an increase of student talk as the lesson progresses.
5. CLASSROOM LESSON NOTES OR TEACHER OBSERVATIONS
Weather the lesson was successful or needed some improvement, it is important that the teacher takes notes of things that did not go as planned or were not as successful in order to modify or adjust for the next time you teach the lesson.
Now that you have carefully considered the above points you are ready to include the following categories in your lesson plan:
A Sample Lesson plan
Lesson: Write the type of lesson you will be teaching and be specific. Ie.: Grammar lesson (Simple past); Listening lesson (Ordering food); Reading lesson ( My best friend) etc.
Date: Include the day you are teaching: May 31, 2012
Time: 1-3
Level: Lower intermediate
Teacher: Include your full name
Materials: Write the name of the book, book section and page numbers; handouts; pencil crayons; Realia (maps, menus); props (hats, glasses etc.) Make sure all the handouts are properly photocopied, your markers/felts are fresh, all handouts photocopied, etc.
Equipment: Laptop, speakers, DVD player etc. (make sure the DVD player is working, your CD is cued on the right track, your speakers are loud enough, etc.)
Aims/objective: This is the target language or topic students must be able to produce or discuss at the end of the lesson. What language functions they should be able to carry out; what specific aspects of the 4 skills should be acquired by the end of the lesson. These must be very specific.
Learners will be able to use the past. (Incorrect because it needs to be more specific.)
Here is the correct way:
Learners will be able to use the simple past when describing a favourite birthday. Learners will be able to understand the form and the use of past time expressions such as (yesterday______, last____ and ____ago).
Assumptions: These are the assumptions that you can safely make about the specific learners knowledge and ability thus will shape the class better. For instance in a class about movie reviews, some assumptions may be:
Ss will be familiar with film reviews in their L1
Ss are interested in movies or books
Ss have gone to a movie before in their own country.
Anticipated problems and solutions: these are the problems of your students and not yours! Each problem must be presented with a solution. For example:
Problem: Students may be confused about the difference between be going to and will
Solution: Teacher provides simple and clear definitions and explanations on the WB, include a time line and asks students for many examples.
Problem: Ss. have different levels of vocabulary awareness.
Solution: Teacher goes over any unfamiliar or difficult word and elicits definitions from higher level students and easier words from lower level students.
Procedure: Your procedure is a description of everything you are going to do together with the times we expect each of the activity to take in the lesson in a chronological order from warm up to production. Every activity, stage of the lesson, and techniques used, should be detailed here. Include as much information to allow a flowing lesson. For example:
Warm up: (9:00-9:10)
Teacher asks Ss to list 3 things they would take on a camping trip. (individually)
Teacher provides first example to give Ss ideas.
Teacher asks Ss to define any difficult word they may have used.
Tune in (9:10-9:20)
Teacher hands out two pictures and asks students to come up with one sentence to connect the two together (pair work)
Teacher provides first example using two different pictures.
T. asks “are there any questions?” (Allow 2 minutes to come up with sentence).
T. goes around and asks students sentences and puts on WB
Now that you have included and considered the above points, your lessons will be highly student-centred, balanced, coherent and well-planned. Furthermore, you will have created a classroom atmosphere that is friendly, creative and fun while still remaining focused on the lesson objectives.
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