Esl Reading Lesson Plan Sample

  Hello. This presentation is going to cover this section on lesson planning and what we're going to do is to have a look as to why we go about planning a lesson, what do we actually put in it? We'll create an empty lesson plan pro-forma and then having done that what we'll do is to fill in that lesson plan for a particular teaching point. So, our starting position is going to be: "Why do we plan lessons at all?" There are a number of reasons why we need to plan a lesson. The first and foremost perhaps is that it's going to create a logical sequence for our lessons. If we didn't have a lesson plan, it is quite possible that we could go all over the place and it would become confusing for the students. By having this plan, what we've created is a structure that we can work from. So,...  [Read more]

  So, the document itself needs to contain some general information about the class, for example the name of the teacher, the date and time of the lesson, what level of class is being taught and in what room, how many students are we expecting, this is important, when we've got things like photocopying and materials to do, what is the context of the lesson, in other words, what is the lesson actually about, what vocabulary or grammar point is this lesson covering and sometimes it's also useful to write out what the focus of the lesson is. So, in effect, the context of the lesson is telling us the grammar point, for example, that might be the present continuous tense, whereas the focus is telling us how we're going to go about teaching it. Another example to illustrate this: Let's...  [Read more]

  Okay, so we're going to use this pro-forma as our lesson plan and we're going to fill one out as though we were planning for an actual lesson. So, we start off with some basic information about the class. So, the name of the teacher, date and time and the class level. In this particular case, our class is going to be an elementary class and the room will be room 3. Having looked through the registers we see that the expected number of students for this particular class is going to be 10. This will help us in creating our worksheet copies. The context of the lesson for this class is going to be present continuous tense and it may well be the first time that this particular level of class has been introduced to this tense. So, our focus is going to be fairly general and it's going...  [Read more]

  Then, we have a set of objectives and aims. Here, the learner objectives relate to what we're hoping the students are going to be able to do by the end of your lesson and quite often, that can be a useful way of writing out what the objectives are. So, we would start the sentence "By the end of the lesson, students should be able to?" and then a list of two, three or four items that we're expecting the students to be able to do by completing this lesson. The learner objectives are different to the teacher aims the teacher aims are what you are expecting from that lesson itself. Now, when you first start teaching, quite a normal aim might be to complete the lesson successfully, to get through the whole thing without having any problems. As time goes on and you become more...  [Read more]

  The first part of my study phase is going to be the board work and I'm going to use the information that I generated in the elicitation part of my engage phase to move on to the actual board work. What I'm going to do is to show the structure of this particular tense. So, the phase study I'm expecting to take about ten minutes on this particular part and, again, the interaction will mainly be the students talking to me. So, how am I going to achieve that with this information? Well, we could ask the students to have a look at the sentences themselves and to tell us what they can see. If we look at each of the first words in here, then at this level, I should hopefully be able to elicit from my students what each of these words have in common and they may well give an answer that...  [Read more]

  So, now we're going to fill the actual procedure of the lesson plan out itself. We mentioned at the start, the first thing we do, is to get some general information about the class that we'll be teaching and then, in order for someone to be able to cover our lesson, we need to present enough information in our lesson plan that they can actually carry it out. What I'm going to do is for each stage of the lesson, I'll indicate what I'm going to do in the lesson and then, we'll cut away from that to have a look to see how that will actually be achieved. So, our lesson is going to be based on a 45-minute lesson and the first phase is going to be the engage phase and it's going to be a straight arrow ESA lesson. I'm going to take approximately five minutes on my engage phase and in...  [Read more]

  Now an example of a straight arrow ESA lesson for our engage phase. What we're going to do is to show the students a video of animals and they are going to say what they like about those animals and try to create a list of some more. So, remember what we're trying to do here is to get the students talking and thinking in English. We're using a typical engage activity, which is to create a list and we try to make sure that all the students have been involved in some way in creating those lists. Moving on to the study phase, the first part is going to be the board work and the teacher is going to try to elicit from the students what each of those animals can and can't do. Typically, what the students will say is just single words, so "run," "jump," "fly," etc. What we would then...  [Read more]

  So, having elicited this particular structure, what I'm now able to do is to move on to the actual study activities. Typically, they will be in the form of worksheets to check that the students actually understand this information. So, I might prepare three activities. They may not do them all but, for example, I could prepare these three study activities. So, the first one is going to be a fairly straightforward matching activity, where perhaps they match the subject to its correct verb "to be" in that part of the sentence. The second one is going to be a gap fill. For example, I might use this verb here and ask them to complete a sentence using that verb, so that I can check that any spelling changes that take place are correct and the final one is going to be an unscramble,...  [Read more]

I suspect that most of us know that having a plan when we walk into a classroom is better than not having a plan. However, we may need to be reminded just how much having a plan can contribute to the quality of the class experience for the students, as well as the learning goals we have set for ourselves.In fact, the lesson plan acts as a framework for the time spent together. It helps us be clear about what we hope to accomplish with this particular class, or a series of classes, and outline how we are going to achieve that learning goal, step by step.Sometimes the plan will get tossed out the window, (figuratively speaking), when an urgent reason to deviate from the plan arises during class. Special situations may make it inappropriate to insist on sticking to a plan, and it...  [Read more]

  Here are helpful tips how to identify the various past tenses in the English language and complete worksheets successfully. The video also helps you to structure an effective lesson around the past tenses in an EFL classroom around the world. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next. In this Unit, I learn of the Dos and Do nots of being in charge of a classroom. Most importantly this chapter showed how I may ensure effectiveness in the classroom. There...  [Read more]

Classrooms are places for seriousness, but they are also places for serious enjoyment. Indeed, fun and entertainment are effective tools of instruction, and games are excellent ways of bringing fruitful fun into the classroom. I would contend, moreover, that games of varied sorts can be introduced at every stage of a lesson as integral parts of the Engage, Study and Activate phases.Rik Ruiter and Pinky Y. Dang, authors of Highway to E.S.L: A User-Friendly Guide to Teaching English as a Second Language (2005), note the significance of games in a chapter entitled 'Fun E.S.L.' Heading for the Sunset'. They explain that it is essential to take breaks from using only the textbook as students 'will become bored as anyone would from being forced to do the mundane' (2005: 281). ...  [Read more]

At ittt we are dedicated to providing all the support you need throughout your TEFL career. We are always available to offer advice on everything from which course to apply for, right through to the application process for the jobs of your choice. Our support services are available for as long as you need us, even after you have completed your certification. Once you have earned your TEFL certificate and find yourself teaching in your own classroom, we will still be available for support and advice wherever you are in the world. You can contact us at any time for help on any subject, including practical assistance with things such as lesson plans and job contracts etc. As practicing teachers ourselves we are well aware of how intimidating your first job in an unfamiliar country can be....  [Read more]

  Before we go into looking at the actual receptive skills lesson, if we were thinking about what potential problems there could be in these lessons. So, what things could go wrong in a reading lesson? Well, firstly the students when they are reading in a language that is not their native language, they tend to read every word as a separate piece and by reading word to word it?s very difficult to get an overall impression of what that particular text is saying. Secondly, the sentence length in a lot of articles that we will get will be very long and many of our students will not be used to that structure of language. So, here it's important to have a think about the way in which the text has actually been written and will it be fairly easy to read. The final thing is the actual...  [Read more]

How important is the student in the process of designing a lesson plan' Once a lesson plan is composed, should the teacher stick rigidly to every step detailed, ploughing through even if students fall behind, miss the point and inevitably lose interest -and faith 'V in what the teacher has to say'Personally, the author believes that the lesson is not the focus of the classroom, rather the student is. If a learning point takes longer than anticipated, then a teacher should hope to be attentive to the needs of the class, adapting the lesson or activities to address difficulties in understanding or to extend the practice of a particularly problematic area. However, it is important to realise that it may not be the topic or focus point that is causing confusion in a lesson. It may...  [Read more]

Although it is natural to be a little apprehensive before taking a TEFL/TESOL course, there is no need to get overly anxious or concerned. As long as you are enthusiastic, prepared to put in the hours and are open to new ideas, you should have no problem successfully completing the training. However, there are a few things you can do in the run up to your training course to ensure that it is a smooth process that ends with that all important certificate in your hand. If you take an online course, you will be able to set your own amount of study hours and choose when you do them. In this case, it is important to plan a study schedule and keep to it if you want to complete the course in the time frame you need. Write up a calendar with weekly goals that you can realistically stick to....  [Read more]

  So, we'll focus first of all on a speaking skills lesson and perhaps a starting point for this would be to ask a question which is: Why do we speak to each other? The reason that it's important to ask ourselves this question is that whatever answers there are to this should be present in our lessons. So, why do we speak to each other? Well, there are a multitude of answers to that but when you boil them all down to their essence, they probably actually come down to one or two things. We communicate to each other by speaking because of either a need. We need something. We want something or a desire to achieve something. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into...  [Read more]

  For the lesson that even takes place, there are a number of things that you need to have considered. Obviously, you need a very clear idea of what it is you're expecting the students to have to do and they need to know why. It's very important before you ask them to do an activity that they have an understanding of the purpose of that activity. You should, secondly, have had a thought about what they already know. Linked to that is, will it be necessary to do any form of pre-teaching before I can expect them to do this activity and finally, we need to make sure that we have prepared all our materials and our instructions for this particular activity. So, we'll consider a straight arrow ESA lesson, the focus of which is to be speaking skills. So, we'll start with our engage and in...  [Read more]

The following contain the results of my reading in to sources pertaining to the use of games in English classes. Most of my references, as cited in the sources list, were taken (and copied) with permission from Jouchi (Sophia) University. I have also drawn upon the teachings of Ray Ormandy, director of my present school (PLS) who has pioneered EFL methods in Japan for over 30 years, specifically in games for children´s classes.1. Why play games in the classroomThere are many reasons to use games in English classes. Aside from the pure enjoyment of playing games as opposed to drilling or deskwork, games can be used to give spot reviews and reinforcement of specific parts of English (e.g. grammar, vocabulary). Games, especially for young learners, directly influence...  [Read more]

Lesson planning is one of the most important but controversial aspects of teaching. Some teachers and educationist are of the opinion that it is very important to make a detail plan of what they are teaching. They spend hours and hours making a daily or weekly plan. Others are of the opinion that it is simply a method devised by the administration to keep the teachers in lengthy but useless paperwork.I personally think that a good plan is like a good movie or a piece of music. If a good movie or music is made keeping in mind all the important aspects like rhythm , tempo, beat etc it will always hold the attention of the viewer or the listener. In the same way a good, well organized lesson plan will keep the students interested in what they are doing. An ill prepared lesson plan...  [Read more]

  The final stage of the lesson will be the activate and the activate phase is going to form the main speaking activity within the lesson. So, it's very very important that here, we do a good demonstration of what it is that we're expecting them to do, that we elicit the type of target language we're expecting them to produce from the activity. So, one way we could go around it is to, firstly, form pairs. Each pair is going to be given a card and onto that card they're going to write the country and a month. What the teacher can then do, just to add a little bit of spice to it, is to collect all of the cards and shuffle them around and then redistribute them to the pairs so that they get a card that doesn't have their country or their month on it. What they're then going to do is...  [Read more]

Reading is a process by which a reader gives meaning to text. The reader relies on a series of skills which they, depending on the age of the English language learner, may already possess in their native tongue. An older child or adult reader will read text knowing its purpose and meaning i.e. to give or request information, persuade, criticise, to give pleasure to or entertain. Further, they can make logical predictions as they read because of pre-existing experience or knowledge. All these skills are used by fluent readers, and as such, will be second nature to an older child or adult. A young English language learner may not have these skills or are developing them at the same time as learning a new language. This will necessitate the adoption of differing texts for reading....  [Read more]

  So let's have a look now what might take place in a typical writing lesson and, again, we're going to use the format of a straight arrow ESA lesson. Our first stage is to the go to the engage stage and, if we think back to what we said before, what we need to do is try to generate interest. So, an example here could be we show a picture first of all taken from a newspaper or magazine and then we can ask the students some questions. From looking at the picture we can ask them if they can tell us what is actually happening now as shown by the picture. Then, we can generate a bit more interest by asking them to give us ideas about what they thought was happening before this picture took place and what happened after. So, here we're just trying to build up the idea of a sequence of...  [Read more]

  So, let's have a look at a typical receptive skills lesson. The main focus of this lesson is going to be reading, although there will be some listening involved as well and it?s going to be a patchwork ESA lesson. As a patchwork lesson, it will start off with an engage and this engage what we're going to do is to play an extract about Elvis Presley and it's going to be an Elvis Presley song and we can ask the students if they know who it is and if they know anything about him can help generate the interest in this. We can also ask them what they'd like to know about it. What we can then do is just to introduce them to the text but they're going to read the detail later on but just at this stage we'll do a quick skimming or scanning exercise to find some information from that...  [Read more]

What will get in your mind if somebody will tell you about teaching' Isn't it lesson planning' Most of the teachers despise this job, why' Well, the hardwork of thinking in creating your own materials. A lot of teachers are struggling in this aspect of the teaching side especially inexperienced.Lesson planning is a skill that is skill that is learned in much the same way as other skills. This skill aid the teaching learning process easy. Obviously, it takes a lot of thinking and practice to acquire this skill. It needs a lot of organizing your thoughts and for the first time doing this stuff is really hard. One will encounter a lot of mistakes but as the old adage goes, 'Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.' A teacher should not give up trying even if...  [Read more]

  In her TEFL review video Francesca from Germany talks about her 120 hour TEFL/TESOL online course. The course gave her a greater understanding of grammar and phonology. It also gave her many insights into how to structure her lessons. She now feels very confident in her ability to be able to deliver productive lessons to her students. She now plans to further her job prospects by completing ITTT's Teaching English to Young Learners course. Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before...  [Read more]

  Before we move on to the planning of a lesson for speaking skills, something that we need to look at first is the idea of the accuracy versus the fluency of speaking. Accuracy relates to the correct usage of grammar and vocabulary, whereas fluency relates to our ability to continue speaking without any interruption. Now, ultimately within a whole ESA lesson or within language learning itself fluency and accuracy are equally important. Within an ESA lesson, however, depending upon which stage we're at in that lesson, then we're either focusing on accuracy or we're focusing on fluency. Remember in the ESA lesson, in the study phase, this is where we're looking at the target language where we're doing our language learning, so it's very important in this stage that we focus on the...  [Read more]

In an ESL lesson, the materials chosen to present the new grammar and vocabulary are a very important part of the teacher’s preparation and largely determine how well the lesson will be understood and enjoyed by the students. The options of materials are many but all have their own appropriate uses. It is a good idea for ESL teachers to build up a collection of teaching materials and ideas that span from fun games to worksheets to short, easy novels. Often, a course book is the main guideline but other materials should be used to complement and diversify the lessons. Choosing the correct materials depend on many different areas such as class size, language level, personal interests of the students, student ages, etc. But the teacher should view this part of planning...  [Read more]

  We are going to move on to the second of the productive skills, which is writing and, again, we'll have look at the background, too, and create a typical lesson for a writing skills session. One of the things to be aware of in a writing skills lesson is that writing tends to be more formal than spoken English. So, there will be some differences between the two, such as writing very often uses less contracted forms and so on, but having said that there are many similarities between the two particular skills. So, many of the considerations that we had for a speaking skills lesson will also apply here to a writing skills lesson. Within writing skills itself there are some sub-skills that we may want to teach and those sub-skills could include, but are not limited to, hand writing...  [Read more]

'Practice makes perfect' is a proverb that most of us will know but which I find incomplete. Take for example a father that wants to teach one of his children to ride a bicycle. If he decides to take one day a year to practice, the kid will probably never learn. What about twice a year or once every month' How fast will the child learn to keep equilibrium, steer the handle and brake when needed if the father decides to take one hour every day for the coming month' Only by repeating the same exercise over and over again will the child become accustomed to the skills needed to ride a bicycle. Who knows, in the future he might even use the phrase, 'it's like riding a bicycle, you never forget'.The same theory applies to learning a language, and I believe that the lesson planning...  [Read more]

I'd like to write about my experience in volunteer teaching with an ALT, Assistant Language Teacher, at the local elementary school.Through this experience, the following important points that were covered by the TEFL course have been re-confirmed.1. Planning and preparation before lessons.2. Usage of the whiteboard/blackboard, flash cards, and the CD player.4. Facilities: classroom or gym'3. Body language: gestures and eye contact4. Voice control: volume, pronunciation, and accent5. DisciplineChiba prefecture, north east of Tokyo, where I live has been employing ALTs from all over the world for a number of years. Most of them are just out of college. Some of them have lived in Japan as exchange students in the past. ALT stands for assistant language teacher and therefore they...  [Read more]