Lesson Planning for
the EFL and ESL Classroom
Basic Concepts:
A Lesson Plan is simply
a step-by-step guide to what an EFL teacher plans to do
in the classroom on a given day. The more detailed the
step-by-step, the better. Ideally, you could not go to
work on a given day and another teacher could read your
lesson plan and know exactly how to teach your class on
that day. a good lesson plan might even include specific
gestures and cues used for various parts of the lesson.
That's how detailed your plan should be.
There are literally
hundreds of types of lesson plans, but there is not one
format accepted by all schools. Many schools have their
own set format, others will let you use whatever format
you like. There is; however, some general agreement
about what should be included in a good lesson plan.
Generally agreed components of a
lesson plan include:
Day/Date:
Lesson Name: What will you
call the lesson?
Class/Level: Age, topic,
skill level, class name
Materials: List everything
you need to teach this lesson. List every possible
thing you will need to take to the classroom, and/or
obtain from the school to complete the lesson. This
list can help you make sure you don't forget any
handouts or special materials that you need to take to
the class.
Textbook/Course book name:
From what book are you working - or drawing the lesson
from?
Unit—title—page number:
Specifically where in that book?
Goal/Aim: What are we
working towards today. Describe the final result of the
lesson in this format -
The students will
be able to ___(do what?)________.
Example: The
students will be able to ask and answer questions about
their hobbies and interests
Grammar Structures Employed:
(How are they formed?): Show the structures. Use a
structure chart if needed.
Questions and Answers Relevant
to your lesson: to be asked during the warm-up to
elicit from students what they may or may not know about
the topic to be covered.
NOTE: Lesson Begins Here
Warm-up: This includes a
review (revision) of the previous lesson linked to this
new lesson; questions and answers you have written
above, used to elicit conversation using the new
structures and function; to show examples of what your
students will learn in this lesson. In some countries
and with some age groups this may come in the form of a
specifically designed game.
Presentation (or ESA format):
Note the target language to be taught - and how you will
teach it. Include how you will stimulate the student's
interest in the language and how you might elicit from
the students the language you are planning to teach.
Include details as specific as when you might model
structures and dialog - and when you will require a
repeated response (choral response) from the students.
Include a structure chart for the grammar - or the
dialog you intend to teach.
Practice: Include the
specific activities and attach any handouts to the
lesson plan. Include up to three practice activities -
sequencing them from most to least structured - slowly
giving the students more freedom.
Production: This is where
students really learn and generalize a new language
skill. Allow/encourage the students to talk about
themselves, their lives, or specific situations using
their own information - but focusing on the target
language that was taught in the presentation - and
practiced in the previous activities. Include exactly
what you will ask the students to do - and that you (as
throughout the lesson) intend to monitor students and
encourage and correct them as needed in their use of the
target language.
Conclusion: Discuss/recap
what you have studied and learned during the lesson. In
some countries and for some ages - this will be followed
by a game that uses the target language.
Notes:
Many experienced teachers, once they
have methodology set in their mind, write only minimally
structured lesson plans as they will have developed a
set routine for how they approach each lesson.
New teachers should develop the habit though of rigidly
following a detailed lesson plan they have written for
at least the first six months to a year. This will
require some real discipline, but it will pay off in
terms of skill development over time.
Sit down after
each class and take a few notes about what went great,
what went wrong and how you might have done a better
job. This will help you a lot in refining your skills.
Even very experienced teachers put some serious thought
into problems that occurred during class and how they
might best be corrected.
Save every
lesson plan you write. If you teach a certain book or
certain topics repeatedly to students of similar levels
(and you will), you’ll find you need only a little
polish on the lesson drawing from your notes that you
wrote from the previous paragraph.
Expanded Concepts:
You can find
literally thousands of EFL/ESL lesson plans on the
Internet. Take a look at few and you will rarely see
the same format used. But - they will generally have,
in one form or another, most of the information
indicated above.
Try the website below
and see what they have and note the similarities and
differences between the lesson formats. Don't get stuck
in a rigid idea of what a lesson plan should look like.
You'll notice many that are called "lesson plans" really
aren't!
The
Intenet TESL Journal: EFL and ESL Lessons and Lesson
Plans
Here is a "Lesson Plan Format" based
on the lesson plan in the Basic Concepts section above.
It will open in a new window - in Word.
One of the best pages for on the web
for understanding what is behind lesson plans is here:
Lesson Planning
and that page includes two very useful
(PDF) downloads:
Now you are ready for
the section on
Boardwork.
