This is often the most stressful and important aspect of teaching, do not underestimate how much effort should be put into lesson planning. I always believe that a class is only as good as your lesson plan. So let’s keep this as uncomplicated as possible. I will divide this into two sections:
- pre-school 2-6 years)
- 7 years and higher
The following is not the only way you can plan a class, every teacher has their own style. I’m simply giving you what has worked for me, in time you will develop your own structure and style which may work even better than the ones I will set out for you.
Pre-school
Know your goal, often with pre-school students, you have just a few words to teach with key sentences surrounding these words. Your first step is to know what you’re teaching, that’s most of the work done. Let’s say your three words to teach are happy, sad, and excited. Don’t be afraid to expand on those words, teach your students more common words such as ok, fine, alright. Now let’s turn these words into a dialogue:
- How are you?
- I am …………..
Note the sentence is I am and not I’m. The reason for this is that at first, it’s important to teach the students the full sentences so that later when they’re a little older, you can teach them the more common contraction: I’m. This way in the future when they speak in contractions they´ll know and understand that I’m is a shortened version of I am (always introduce contractions in this way).
Great, we now have the words and the sentences figured out, now for the execution. Let’s say for the sake of argument that your classes are 2 hours long. For younger kids, they need no more than two, ten-minute breaks (your school will often dictate how many breaks you can take, but if they insist on one break, you can easily adapt your lesson).
Let´s break the class into three structures:
- 35 minutes (10-minute break)
- 30 minutes (10-minute break)
- 25 minutes (the end)
For the younger ones, it’s vital that every class you revise with them these basic English questions:
- What’s your name?
- How old are you?
- How are you?
Take careful note of questions two and three. Many times I’ve had other teachers ask my students ‘how are you?’ and to my embarrassment, they reply ‘I’m four years old’. Use the first 5 minutes to go through these questions, change how you go through these questions every time. In one class, play a pass the parcel game, the next class do a running race.
That’s five minutes out of the way. Next, use a video or song. I would usually have a song at the beginning of class and after every break time in order to get the kids moving, confident and excited (but not too excited). Ensure you prepare TPR (total physical response) for every line of the song. Alternatively, I used videos called ‘alphablocks’. They’re nice 3 – 4-minute videos teaching phonics where the kids learn how to pronounce letters and how to group sounds and letters together (see chapter ´Further Material´ for more information).
Now we’re about 10 minutes into the class.
I often use the next 25 minutes as a chance to teach something completely unrelated to the topic of the class. Often preschool children´s books are limited in vocabulary and if you only follow the book, your students will not learn a sufficient amount of English. Use the first part to teach other things such as weather, food, emotions etc. There is a software called Genki, which I highly recommend buying. It´s an interactive animation software that is divided into different topics. Once you have chosen your topic, the software starts off by going through the keywords and sentences, then there is a flash video game and lastly, you end with a song. After completion, you should have five to ten minutes left. Use this time to review the words and sentences you taught in your previous class.
After the first break, begin as usual with a song or a phonic activity such as alphablocks. From here, go through the new words. For each word, play a quick individual game to check pronunciation. Once you have gone through all the words, play a game involving all the students and all the words.
Your next aim is to turn those words into sentences. Introduce the sentences with an individual game first to check for pronunciation and then a group game to practice the sentences.
Once you have gone through all the sentences, play a few team and group-based games to get students practising the sentences. Once you have only ten to fifteen minutes left of the class, you can move on to writing.
For really young students, start with tracing letters of the alphabet. As they get older and can begin to recognize letters more and more, move on to sentences. This should involve a worksheet where the key sentences are written down, followed by a three or four ledger line space, the students then trace the words and then write them down freehand underneath.
As the students are writing and tracing, go to each student and get them to read the sentences aloud to you so that you can once again listen for pronunciation but also to check if they can actually read what they are writing.
At the end of the class, get your students lined up. One student stands at the front and is holding the points. He or she asks each student as they leave the classroom ‘how many points do you have?’ The students must then reply ‘I have … points’.
Here is a summary of the above:
Past 1: 35 minutes
- Review basic introduction questions
- Song or phonic activity
- Genki/unrelated vocab – introduce new words, play a game with those words and then finish with a song
- Review topic from the previous class
Part 2: 30 minutes
- Song or phonic activity
- Introduce New Words
- Individual games for each word to check the pronunciation
- Group game for comprehension of new words
- Introduce New Sentences
- First New Sentence
- Group game
- Individual game
- Second New Sentence
- Group game
- Individual game
- Third New Sentence
- Group game
- Individual game
- Team or group-based games to practice all the sentences
Part 3: 25 minutes
- Song or phonic activity
- Review the Sentences
- Group game
- Individual game
- Group game
- Individual game
- Writing ( last 10-15 minutes)
A very important thing to keep in mind when planning your lesson is to go overboard with your preparation. Prepare for more games than you anticipate you will actually do during class. It’s very hard to predict what mood your students will be in, which games they will like and, how many students will turn up to your class. Some days you will power through all your games, other days your students will enjoy one game so much that it stretches on for 30 minutes or even an hour. It’s better to have more games and not need them then have not enough games and need more. Whichever games you don’t use in that class, you can always save it for the next class!
Higher-level
It’s a little harder to have a universal lesson structure for higher levels as so often your lesson structure will depend on the topic that you’re teaching. Once again, assuming you are teaching a two-hour class, the first thing to do is to identify what you’re teaching. What is your key vocab, what is your grammar point and what sentences and dialogues can be formed from your key sentences?
Let’s say your words for the class are: above, next to, under, behind, in front of and inside. Identify what are you actually teaching? What is the grammar? You are teaching prepositions.
Next, identify which sentences would best incorporate the grammar. Think to yourself: why are prepositions used? To describe where an object or place is.
The sentences you use are your choice and there will always be many variations of sentences. When I decide which sentences to teach, I base my decision by thinking about how we use this grammar in everyday life:
Question: Where’s the (noun – book)?
Answer: It’s/the noun (book) is next to/under/behind/inside/above the (noun – table)
The next thing to do is to decide what the actual context of the lesson will be. Remember the prepositions are the new words, so you don’t want to overcomplicate the lesson and introduce more words for the sentences. Analyze what your students know and ensure the context is a review for the students and not new material.
Review! Review! Review!
One of the key rules, always review everything your students have ever learnt. You can spend a month teaching how to tell time, but if after that month you never review it, the pupils will forget everything they learnt. This is why it’s so important to review previous material in every class. Never teach something and then never review it, learning a language is an accumulated art.
We had learnt in a previous class the names of objects in the classroom such as whiteboard, computer etc. So to review that lesson while incorporating the new vocab, I created the following dialogue:
Question: Where’s the whiteboard?
Answer: The whiteboard is above the computer.
Let´s take another example. Perhaps your students learnt about places in a city six months ago but you haven´t had the chance to review those words yet. This would be the perfect chance by creating the following dialogue:
Question: Where’s the hospital?
Answer: The hospital is next to the police station.
Now you have your vocab, grammar point, dialogue and lesson context (let’s use the topic: ‘places in a city’ from now on).
If you are teaching for two hours, this is how I would structure that class:
Part 1 (50 mins)
Break (10 mins)
Part 2 (60 mins)
Part 1 can be broken into three smaller parts:
- Starter – always have a fun 5 to 10-minute starter activity, it’s important to either get the students´ brains working or blood rushing.
- Unrelated material – this is a great time to expand your class’s ability to use English. Always throughout the week check the news, there’s always an interesting article that can be brought up in the class. This can take from 5 minutes to the whole 50 minutes depending on whether the students are able to talk freely about the article.
- Introduce new words. Focus on spelling, meaning and pronunciation of the words.
Part 2 focuses on using the words and sentences in a real-life scenario through dialogues and monologues. If there’s time left at the end of the class, always have a worksheet prepared which focuses on spelling and/or comprehension.
Let’s take a look at how this can be written up into a lesson plan. Usually, schools will hand teachers their own lesson plan formats. This is my style which can be adapted for any other lesson plan format. Take note that the following lesson plan is quite detailed. It’s important for new teachers to create detailed lesson plans in order to get familiar with the steps and aspects that are involved when teaching. As you become more experienced, you will need to include less and less detail until you get to the point where a few bullet points are all that is necessary. However remember, this doesn’t mean I put any less effort and time in preparing for the class.
Lesson Plan
Key vocab: next to, behind, above, under, in front of, inside
Key grammar: prepositions
Context: places in a city
Dialogue: Q) Where’s the (place in a city).
- It’s (preposition) the (place in a city).
Classroom goal: Students will be able to ask and direct others to places in a city
Anticipated problems: Students may mix up the meaning of different prepositions
Solution: Spend more time with the prepositions and use plenty of examples to ensure comprehension
| Function | Description | Student Activity | Estimated time |
| Starter
(listening activity) |
Students watch a video clip from ‘A nightmare before Christmas’ and must draw a line every time they hear ‘What’s this?’ | Individual | 5 mins |
| NEWS (speaking/free talk activity) | The above picture will slowly be revealed to students who must guess what today’s news is about? Use Wh questions to elicit the story if students are struggling to describe the scenario. Afterwards, look at the people’s expressions and review words to describe the emotions the people are experiencing e.g. surprised, scared, and calm. | Group-based | <20 mins |
| Key Vocab | Elicit key vocab through actions. Play ‘British Bulldog’ to practice pronunciation and ensure comprehension. This will be done by presenting flashcard images depicting prepositions, the students must then say the correct preposition that follows the picture. | Group activity | 10 mins |
| Comprehension of key vocab | I will create a PowerPoint presentation with images of objects in certain positions depicting a preposition. We will play the ‘buzz game’. In pairs, one student is sitting whilst the other is standing behind. One student places another object in relation to another object, if a student who is standing knows the preposition, he or she will squeeze their partner’s shoulders who will then make a buzz sound. The first student to buzz, the student standing behind can then say the answer and if correct the pair get a point. | Group activity | 15 mins |
| Break | Play a Mr. Bean video so that students are entertained and remain seated and do not run around the classroom. | Individual | 10 mins |
| Starter | Re-tell the story of Mr. Bean by going around the class, each student says one sentence to string the story together. Keep going until one student can no longer say a sentence (for higher levels, let them try to predict the future – what will Mr. Bean do afterwards) | Group activity | 5 mins |
| Introduce key sentences | Elicit the sentence:
A) The pen is behind the chair. Elicit the answer: Q) Where is the pen? In teams of five, we will play a PowerPoint game in which there are five different coloured cars. A student will place an object in relation to another object and ask the class a question. The first team who can correctly say the sentence, their car moves forward one step. The first car to reach the finish line wins. |
Group activity | 10 mins |
| Review places in a city | In two teams, give the students 2 minutes to write down as many places in a city that they can remember. Then mind map the places on the whiteboard by doing a relay race. Each person in the team runs to the whiteboard and writes one place in a city. They have two minutes to complete the race, the team with the most places written down after two minutes wins. I will then go through the places to check for comprehension and pronunciation. | Team activity | 5 mins |
| Preparation for the main activity | I will present a map on the whiteboard, we will then go through the new questions and answers:
Q) Where is the train station? A) The train station is above the supermarket. I will get each student to ask another student a similar question to make sure they all understand the dialogue. |
Group activity | 5 mins |
| Main activity | Students will sit in two lines facing each other, similar to a speed dating activity. One half of the class will have a pre-made map, the other will have lists of places. When I say go, students with the places will have thirty seconds to ask the opposite student with the map where these places are and write them down on their worksheet. After thirty seconds, the students with the map will move to their left so that the students are faced with a new partner. This continues until one student has successfully completed their worksheet and knows where all the places are in the city. He or she is the winner. The roles of the students are then swapped and a new pre-made map is given. | 15 mins | |
| Worksheet | In pairs, students complete the given worksheet which has the keywords and pictures of a monkey in relation to a box. The students must write the correct sentence next to the image, the first pair to finish wins. | Pair activity | 10 mins |
| Filler | Tinglish – a game in which we go around the classroom, each student says a number counting up from 1, however one student will say it in English, the next in their native tongue, the next in English, the next in their native tongue and so forth until one student messes up and we go back to the beginning. I will set a target of 100. If as a class we can reach 100 without anyone messing up, everyone will get 2 points. | Group activity | 5 mins |
