Planning an English Lesson: Few Tips for a Successful Lesson

Planning an English Lesson:Few Tips for a Successful Lesson

Planning a lesson we think about its results. We want it to be interesting and useful; we want to be satisfied with it. Let’s have a look into Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It says, “A lesson plan is a teacher's detailed description of the course of instruction for one class. A daily lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide class instruction. Details will vary depending on the preference of the teacher, subject being covered, and the need and/or curiosity of students. There may be requirements mandated by the school system regarding the plan. A lesson plan is the teacher's guide for running a particular lesson, and it includes the goal (what the students are supposed to learn), how the goal will be reached (the method, procedure) and a way of measuring how well the goal was reached (test, worksheet, homework etc)”.

You can find a lot of information and advice for achieving excellent goals. As for me I usually use the following. It is important to break the material up into several parts and choose activities suitable for each.An effective lesson has four parts:

Warm-up.

Presentation.

Practice.

Production.

Every part has its objectives and activities.

The objective of the first part (Warm-up) is to reduce students’ anxiety and increase their willingness to speak. So, I use such activities as short games (hangman, puzzle, scattergories, acrostic, etc); review games, making surveys or lists, quick pair or group discussions; etc.If you are interested you may use them at your lessons. They are the following:

Word association

Task: Word association – Ss take turns saying a word that is somehow connected to the previous word, e.g. saucer, cup, India, Asia, etc.

7 to 1 dialogue

Task: 7 to 1 dialogue – Each S writes the first line of a dialogue in 7 words. Pass to the partner and write the next exchange in 6 words. Keep passing paper backwards and forwards ending in only 1 word and/or opposite.

Acrostic

Task: Acrostic– write a word vertically. Ss write a poem/short story starting each line with the letter given.

Pictures

Task: Pictures

Ss take a picture each from a pile and return to their seats. Put Ss into groups of 3-4 to make a story involving all pictures.

Word stems

Task: Word stems – finish the sentence.

Blank photos

Task: Blank photos – draw 4/5 rectangles on a piece of paper. In pairs Ss talk about their “photos”.

Catastrophe

Task: Catastrophe – Ss make other words from the letters in a word.

Scattergories

Task:Scattergories – Ss choose a 4/5 letter word and write it across the top of blackboard with spaces between the letters. Then write 4 categories vertically down the left hand side of blackboard under the word. Divide blackboard into a chart with boxes. Ss, in groups, then copy the chart and fill it in with a word for each category beginning with the letter above the table.

Pictures

Task: Pictures

Ss take a picture each from a pile and return to their seats. In pairs Ss have to find as many things in common as possible.

Controversial statements

Task:Controversial statements – “All the cars should be yellow”, “Everyone should do military service”, etc

Pictures

Task: Pictures

Ss take a picture each from a pile and return to their seats. Tell their partner why they chose that picture.

As for the second part (Presentation) I prefer to divide it into 2 parts: Experience and Analysis.

The objective of Experience is to introduce students to the theme of the lesson and show students an example of language used in context. So I try to use listening task, vocabulary review, reading task, role-play, eliciting vocabulary; etc.

And then there is another point of the Presentation: Analysis, the objective of which is to present students with new material which is the aim of the lesson. In this case you can choose either explanation of grammar points or explanation of functions or unknown vocabulary, etc.

Practice. In this part of the lesson, the focus shifts from the teacher as presenter to the students as completers of a designated task. Students work in pairs or small groups on a topic-based task with a specific outcome. So we see that the objective of practice is to allow students to practice the new material in a controlled environment, either orally or in a written form. Although the importance of context is less here, contextualized activities are always better for students. The activities for it are various: true-false exercises, fill-in the blank exercises (cloze), language skill exercises, multiple-choice exercises, ordering items, oral drills or it may be drawing based on text, etc.

In the Production activity students should have to produce material on their own, because the objective of this part of the lesson is to allow students to use new language independently and communicatively in a natural context. Longer activities such as board games, which can be played in groups, or activities for the whole class, group discussions where students work in teams, task oriented games, surveys, role-plays, drama, creative writing, research reading, competitions and others activities would be best. 

Not all lessons will be conducted the same. In some instances, the Presentation of new material may take an entire lesson or the production activity may be an entire lesson. It is always good to have familiar activities to fall back on in case something doesn’t work quite the way you had planned. At any rate, lesson plans are enormously helpful and if the following year you find yourself teaching the same material, preparation will be a breeze.

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