Syllabus Design
Syllabus Design
Syllabus Design
Lesson Plan
In the educational field, the lesson plan is like a map with some steps to follow in order
to achieve linguistic and functional objectives. Thus, this tool guides the teacher to
develop the whole class, because it has descriptions to carry out the lesson. In applying
this project, the lesson plan guided the steps to follow in the process of English
language teaching to children. In addition, all lesson plans were based on the
methodological strategy of TPR combined with games. Then, a lesson plan had the
following steps:
General aspects:
Level: Here it was described the level of students, who were beginners (basic
users).
Number of students: It was referred to 36 students.
Days: Each lesson is planned from Monday to Friday for about 1 ½ hours per
day.
Students were divided into two groups, young learners needed much more time
to learn and eldest ones learned faster; also they needed extra oral and written
exercises using games with different materials.
Objectives and vocabulary:
Linguistic objective: It contained the grammar structure to be taught.
Functional objective: Here it is stablished the reason that students should learn
any lesson, for example to greet people, to recognize names of useful school
materials, and so on.
Vocabulary to learn: It isimportant to delimit what vocabulary students were
going to learn, which would serve as learning indicators.
Learning and teaching process
Time: Here it was described the time that each activity lasted. It was important
to control the time in order to develop the whole lesson plan.
Activity description: This part referred to different activities which helped to
achieve the objectives of the lesson plan.
Interaction: It was important to describe the interaction between teacher and
student (T-S), teacher and the class (T-class), or among students (S-S).
Skills: Here it was described what skill has been developed in each activity.
Resources: This point referred to different materials and resources to use. For
example flash cards, realia, photocopies, color papers, drawings, etc.
Stage: There were three stages in the learning and teaching process:
a) Warm up:
Introduction was a very important step to develop the learning and teaching process. In
this step children were motivated to learn by showing them flash cards, pictures,
images, charts or realia, or acting and making gestures. Some suspense and surprise was
added in showing didactic resources, which motivated children to learn more and more.
This step had the objective to generate students´ interest and expectation to learn. Here
it was introduced some new vocabulary through games and flash cards, which was the
way to produce positive emotions, which would facilitate new information learning.
In this step teacher had a class routine before to begin the current lesson. It consisted on
having some prepared questions or orders in little pieces of paper about the previous
lessons, which students were allowed to pick up and answer. No more than five
questions were done to some students, but they all were ready to answer. Some of
questions or orders were; What is your favorite … (color, animal, fruit, food, day,
month)? Where do you live? Also, some orders were useful to practice Speaking and
Listening skills, for example: Sing a song, smile, spell your name, write “housewife”,
draw two balloons or other things or animals, etc.
b) Main activity:
This step was used to transfer children new knowledge, they experimented how to
develop the skills, focusing on listening and speaking at the very beginning and writing
and reading skills later. It had the objective to provide intensive practice in order
students to appropriate knowledge about
the lesson, it means linguistic and functional objectives proposed for the lesson as well
as to teach vocabulary and reach indicators.
This step allowed students to practice the new language a certain time during the class.
Practice and language production were chances for students to use and refine their
understanding; then, students could practice in pairs and then in smalls groups. In this
step some mistakes and doubts were clarified and once students were helped, they were
ready to practice what they have learned. In this stage children begun to construct their
new knowledge.
Many activities were developed in this stage, including many games and other
educational strategies like songs with full physical movements and mimic, with
different materials and resources. It is important to mention that grammar structures as
well as new vocabulary were easier to learn using educational and joyful games.
c) Follow up:
This step had the objective to reinforce students learning. In this step children were
ready to be evaluated about the learned lesson (the four skills, vocabulary and grammar
structures), thus teacher could know student´s weaknesses, help them and know their
learning progress. It was important to test students by using different games and
resources; students though that they were playing, but in fact they were being evaluated.
Therefore, this type of evaluation was not a stressing factor, but an enjoyable
educational aspect. Also it was important to have written tests in order to know
students` progress in writing and reading skills.