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Lesson plan is a very important element for teaching. Not only it provides a standard procedure of teaching, but also helps the teacher keep track of each lesson. Moreover, it is also very helpful in some special case, such as substitute teach can use the lesson provided to carry out the lesson more efficiently. Although different teachers may have different teaching style, but a lesson plan should be prepared by all teachers despite the teaching style. A good lesson plan should include the following 5 components; lesson topic, class objectives, procedure, time management, and student practice. Lesson topic or language point if teaching English as Second Language students is the first thing that should be on the lesson plan. It shows the main topic of what will be taught in the class. Lesson topic should be short and clear; for example, “Use of past tenses.” This will be enough to show that this class is about teaching students to use past tenses. We can break it down more if the topic takes up to multiple classes to teach, for example, “Use of past tenses part 1.” Lesson topic comes first on the lesson plan because it helps the teacher to keep track of what to teach, specially if one teacher teaches multiple classes. Class objective is the most important thing on the lesson plan. The objectives should be the focus of each lesson. It is what do teacher want the students to be able to do by the end of the lesson. Using the example above, in an English class that will be teaching about past tenses. The class objective can be as follow; “By the end of the lesson, students will be able to use past tenses to write simple sentences about what they have done yesterday.” Class objectives help ensure that teacher stay on the topic and cover the relevant material during the class and helps students to understand what they should be able to do by the end of the class. Procedure is the step-by-step guide of the lesson. It should show the progress of the lesson. Which means it tells what should be taught first and what should be taught second accordingly till the last activity of the lesson. Using the same topic as above with ESA methodology, a simple procedure may be as follow. First, get students think in English about what they like to do. Second, ask students questions like what they ate yesterday. Third, filling the blank activity about student’s dinner yesterday. By looking at the procedure of the lesson plan, teacher should be able to know what to do at each stage of the class. Time management is very important on the lesson plan since teachers have limited time to cover the materials. Teacher must plan their class time carefully, so they don’t run out of time or finish the class too early. For example, a 50-minutes ESL class using ESA methodology can be arranged as follow. 10 minutes on engage phase, 20 minutes on study phase, and 20 minutes on activate phase. It can be break down into more if necessary. Practices are mainly used to check if students understood the topic, and help students memorize what they have learned during the class. Teachers usually have practices for students every class. So, it is important to put this on the lesson plan to it gets carried out at the right time. Lesson plan helps teachers to carry out what they need to teach and be more efficient. There are many more things can be put on the lesson plan in order to fulfill the needs of each lesson. But lesson topic, class objectives, procedure, time management, and student practice are the five components that a good lesson plan always includes.
