While preparing your lesson plan, it is wise to follow these tips to cater for

learners’ needs:

1. Identify clear objectives that are relevant to the target standards. It is

important that these objectives should be stated at the beginning of the
lesson plan. For example, the objective of a lesson about the present
continuous would go like this: “by the end of the lesson, learners will be able
to form and use the present continuous to describe actions happening at the
time of speaking“. Notice that this objective is specific and measurable.
2. Create learning activities based on the identified objectives.
3. Start with activities that get the students into the mood to learn. These
activities should be in the form of warm-ups and shouldn’t last more
than 2 to 5 minutes. Warm up activities don’t have to be related to the
objectives of the lesson. Examples of warm-up activities include tongue
twisters, riddles, command drills, etc.
4. Activate prior knowledge through lead-in activities. These activities
focus on what learners already know. The teacher should build on this
prior knowledge to go a bit above their current level of proficiency.
5. Contextualize language. Present the target language structures
through clear situations, preferably through a text (spoken or written.)
We never learn structures in isolation of the context where they are
used.
6. The presentation should be efficient in terms of economy and ease. It
should also be appropriate to SS needs.
7. Avoid long explanations and prepare instead discovery activities
which help raise students awareness about the target structures.
8. Guide students through well-formulated questions.
9. Increase wait time. After you ask questions, give students the
opportunity to think before they answer. Being in a hurry to get a quick
answer will not be of any help to your students. Instead, increasing wait
time after asking a question will create a heightened level of
involvement.
10. Promote cooperative learning. It is very helpful to design lesson plans
that involve varied modes of work such as pair work, group work or
teamwork.
11. In the skill-getting phase of the lesson, introduce various activities.
The lesson plan should include:
– accuracy and fluency activities;
– spoken as well as written productions;
– receptive as well as productive learning;
– visual as well as kinesthetic learning styles;
–…
12. Start from easy to more challenging activities.
13. In the skill using phase of the lesson, give an opportunity for language
use in meaningful situations.
14. In the expansion phase, help SS transfer newly acquired language.
For example, the lesson plan should normally include activities that help
students use the target structures to talk about personal situations.

Lesson Planning and use of resources for language Teaching

Module 2
Part 1: planning and preparing a lesson or sequence of lessons
Choosing assessment activities
We can carry out informal assessment during a lesson by monitoring and observing
learners while they are doing ordinary classroom activities.

It is an important way of checking how our learners are getting on

 To carry out informal assessment of productive skills in larger classes, we

need to assess small number of learners in different lessons.
 We can carry out informal assessment of receptive skills by checking learners'
answers to reading or listening tasks.
 We can make separate assessments of learners' grammatical and lexical
knowledge by using language games or quizzes.
 Also, we can assess motivation and effort by observation and by talking to
learners about their learning.
 Keep records of informal assessment.
 We need to plan informal assessment in the same way as we plan our
teaching

It is used to get more information about the progress of individual learners

Differences between formal and informal assessment

Planning an individual or a sequence of lessons

when we plan an individual lesson, we need to think about its aims,
the shape of the lesson and the kind of techniques that are most
appropriate for a particular group of learners.
Assessment

Means collecting information about learners' performance in order to make

judgements about their learning.
Structural sequence
1. revision: past simple
2. revision: present perfect
3. contrast: past simple vs. present perfect
Integrated skills sequence
A scheme of work helps us plan a sequence of lessons in the best
way to cover the school syllabus, also helps us to think about what
we want to achieve and what materials we might need; and it helps
us to include enough variety across our lessons.
The sequence of lessons should have a logical and learning-friendly
progression and a good balance of approaches and activities.
Advantages and disadvantages
Identifying the different components of a Lesson Plan
Before the Lesson
Writing down the aims and the procedures for each stage of the lesson helps us to
make sure that we have planned the best possible sequence to enable us to achieve
those aims.

IDENTIFYING AND SELECTING AIMS

Components of a Lesson Plan
After the Lesson
We can keep the plan as a record of what happened, making any changes necessary
to show how the lesson was different from the plan. We can then use the plan and
notes to help plan the next lesson. At this stage, the plan may be more like a
photograph, a story or a summary, giving us a record of the lesson

LESSON PLAN HEADINGS

Timetable fit
Personal aims
aspects of our own teaching we want to develop or improve

Key Concepts
Things that learners may find difficult

Possible solutions

action we will take to deal with the anticipated problems

Teaching aids materials equipment

Key Concepts
Personal Aim

Personal aims show what we would like to improve of focus on in our own teaching.

Examples:

 to try different correction techniques

 to remember to check instructions
 to write more clearly on the board
 to make more use of the phonemic chart
 to get learner to work with different partners
 to get quieter learners to answer questions.

Main Aim

Describes the most important thing we want to achieve in a lesson or sequence of

lessons, to reinforce or consolidate the use of language they already know or to
revise language they have recently learnt.

The subsidiary aims show the language or skills learners must be able to use well in
order to achieve the main aim of the lesson. It enables us to see how the lesson
should develop from one stage to the next.

Informal assessment

* Can consist of tasks with single answers (multiple-choice, matching, true/false)

* Objective Test gives us information about learners' knowledge of particular

language skills.

* Test the main things we have taught

* Choose assessment tasks carefully for young learners, making sure that the tasks
are familiar.

The most important thing is to make sure that the materials, tasks
and activities we select are the ones that will help a particular group
of learner to achieve the aim we have identified.
Individual lesson

Sequence of lessons

1. vocabulary development: describing places

2. reading: choosing a holiday
3. writing: letter to a friend narrating holiday experiences
Example
Key concepts
Project work
 A lesson plan should be clear and easy to read
 Variety is very important both in a sequence of lessons and in a single lesson
 there are different ways of introducing variety into lessons:

Subsidiary aims
1. reading and listening about free time activities
2. class survey and research: sport and entertainment
3. preparation of a poster display to show results of survey
What is a Lesson Plan?

It's a set of notes that helps us to think through what we are going to teach and how
we are going to do it.

The main ones show us what the lesson is for (aims) and what the teacher and the
learners will do during the lesson and how they will do it (procedure)

The plan can also help the teacher to check timing - the amount of time we plan for
each stage- and to check that the lesson is following the sequence we decided on.

How do we identify and select aims?

Who we are planing the lesson for.

How the lesson is connected to the last lesson and/or the next one

Main aims
other things we want learners to be able to do during the lesson because they lead to
the main aim.

Assumptions
What we think learners already know or can already do related to the aims

Anticipated language problems

http://www.eslbase.com/tefl-a-z/lesson-planning

Aims are what we want learners to learn or be able to do at the end of a lesson, a
sequence of lessons or a whole course.

When we make a lesson plan, we need...

 to ask ourselves how the procedures we have planned will help to achieve our
aims.
 to consider variety. Learners of all ages need different activities in a lesson.
 During the lesson we should teach the learners, not the lesson plan! we must
be prepared if necessary, to change our plan while we are teaching.
 We can include extra activies in the lesson plan

DURING THE LESSON WE SHOULD TEACH THE LEARNERS,

NOT THE LESSON PLAN!
useful reminders of things to take to the lesson

Procedures

tasks and activities for each stage

Interaction patterns

ways in which learners work at different stages (individually, in pairs, in groups, as a

whole class)

Timing
length of time needed for each stage

homework

What do my learners already know?

Formal Assessment

When we plan an individual lesson, we have to ask ourselves...

1. Will the topic be interesting and motivating?
2. Are the activities and materials at the right level?
3. Have I planned enough for the time available?
4. Does each step in the lesson help to achieve the aim?
A sequence of lessons is a number of related lessons that develop
language knowledge and/or language skills over a period of time.
Examples...
During the Lesson
Level and number of learners
what we want learners to learn or to be able to do by the end of the lesson

What do they need to know?

Learning Aims

Personal aims show what we would like to improve of focus on in our own teaching.

Examples:

 to try different correction techniques

 to remember to check instructions
 to write more clearly on the board
 to make more use of the phonemic chart
 to get learner to work with different partners
 to get quieter learners to answer questions.

Subsidiary Aim

 The syllabus will give us a general direction for planning our teaching
 We can identify and select appropriate personal aims in a similar way.
  We should not confuse aims and procedures.
 Learners also need to know what the lesson is going to be about.
 Learners of all ages find it helpful to know what they are doing things

Identifying and selecting aims are the first steps in planning a lesson. Then, we can
design or select the most appropriate activities, put them in the best order and
choose the most suitable teaching aids and materials. After the lesson, we can look
back at this part of the plan to see whether we have achieved our aims.