Prepare for success
Prepare for Success
“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” – John Wooden
TEACHME TEFL
Preparation is vital to a good lesson. For a lesson to be successful you need to prepare. The best way to prepare is using an effective lesson plan.
Ultimate Objective
Before you can start a lesson plan you need to set out the goals for your students.
Determine the ultimate objective of your lessons. You may have this defined for you by your school or you may have to determine this yourself. Once you have your ultimate objective, then you will need to look at the number of lessons you have to achieve your objective.
Setting Goals
With this information, you will be able to make a plan. Outline a goal for each lesson, these goals should be gradual, building on what was taught in the previous lessons. Be sure also to include some revision lessons at key points along the course to assess the students progress.
1- Determine Ultimate Objective
2- Outline Class Goals
3- Plan each lesson
Lesson Plan
Now you have your objective and goals set, you are ready to plan a lesson.
Remember that a lesson plan is just that, a plan. Plans change, be sure you allow your lesson plan to be fluid and you continue to review and update as changes happen.
The Plan
There are some key items that you need to include in your plan.
Date
This is simple but so important to be able to keep your plans in order. Also if you are unable to teach for some reason, another teacher will be able to pick up your plan and get teaching.
Number of students
It is important to be aware of the number of students, this will help with your lesson planning. If you have 13 students, it will be harder to do pair work with an uneven number. Where as if you have 10 students, you will be able to do group work, maybe in 2 groups instead of 3.
Age of students
This will help you to focus the lesson plan to be able to appeal to the age of the students.
Student level
This may sound similar to the students age, however remember that a class of beginner students around 8-9 years old would need to be taught in a very different way to an intermediate level class of students of the same age. This helps you to plan appropriate activities that match the students level.
Lesson Goal
You have already determined what this will be, but it is important you include this on your lesson plan.
Grammar or Target Language
Define what will be taught in the lesson. This will be closely linked with your lesson goal. Generally there is only one aspect of grammar taught each lesson, your students are learning, you need to develop a lesson that reached the lesson goal.
Content
This is the most important part, the way you structure the lesson is determined by the elements above. You may choose to use a PPP lesson plan or an ESA lesson plan or another plan you have found works well.
PPP – Presentation, practise, production
Presentation – In this section the lesson objective is presented to the students. This part is generally teacher led, however by eliciting language from students you can turn this part into a teacher/student section.
Practise – In this section students practice the learning objectives by means of activities individually, in pairs or as a group. This part should be teacher driven, using written as well as speech to practise the learning outcome.
Production – In this section the students use the learning outcome in conversation, activities or exercises etc. This should always be student driven and students should be encouraged to talk as much as possible in this stage.
ESA – Engage, study, activate
Engage – Introduce the learning outcomes by eliciting information from students thus engaging them in the initial part of the lesson and increasing student talk time.
Study – Similar to the practise phase of the PPP lesson plan. Students are to study or practise the learning outcomes raised in the engage phase.
Activate – Similar to the production phase of the PPP lesson plan. Students then activate the learning outcomes through activities that allow them to use this new learning outcome.
Classroom Setup
How the classroom is arranged will be dependant on the activities and lesson content. If you have group work, you may set up the tables in groups. If you have an assessment, you may have the classroom set up in rows. Including this in your lesson plan, enables you to easily see how to set up your classroom.
Materials
Like classroom set up, this will help you to prepare before your lesson. Add the material list at the end of your lesson plan, once you have planned the content and activities you will know what materials will be required.
Using these tips, your lesson plan will enable you to be prepared to enter the classroom and teach a successful class.
Learn more about lesson planning and preparation in Lesson 2 of your TeachMe TEFL 120hr TEFL course.