Planning outstanding lessons

Planning Before Getting to Know Your Class

Would you plan a road trip with a group of friends without knowing what they want to see or what their interests are? Chances are they have their own goals/expectations for the trip. You will surely have the course syllabus for the semester/year ahead of time, but that is simply a list of what your students should learn to reach a specific level. Lesson planning (what you’ll do for each individual lesson) should begin after you’ve obtained more information about your students’ goals, expectations and interests.

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Not Having a Clear Goal

Consider a single lesson you will teach. What do you want your students to accomplish by the end of the lesson? Learn the Simple Past? Or better yet, learn to talk about events that happened in the past? Once you have a clear goal in mind, everything else will fall into place, including the activities you will choose to reach this goal.

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Having No Lesson Structure

Your course syllabus is your big picture of the entire journey; each individual lesson plan is what you’ll be doing at each individual stop and what you you’ll be doing to get them one step closer to the main goal. It’s simply not good enough to spend 45 minutes at each stop; you have to have a plan - with a solid structure. For a great example of what this structure should look like check out this article.

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Failing to Include Variety

When you go on a road trip you want to see natural landscape, but also enjoy some of the things each city or town has to offer. Variety is key. Make sure to include lots of different types of activities in your lesson plan: video, music, crafts, games, group work or pair work, etc… but make sure you include activities or tasks that serve your purpose: reaching the goal.

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Using the Same Lesson Plans

The coursebook and the class syllabus may be the same as last year’s, but are your students the same? Each class, each group of students is different. The lesson plans you used in previous years may not be the best for this particular group of learners. Moreover, consider the new things you might need to change/add - there are always new apps, music artists, movies and interests that crop up every year. If you’re happy with your previous lesson plans or have some that really worked, by all means use them, but don’t forget to make the necessary tweaks so that they better suit a particular group of students.

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