UNIVERSIDAD GERARDO BARRIOS

LESSON PLANNING

METHODS AND TECHNIQUES FOR TEACHING ENGLISH I

MAY 30, 2019

 DISCUSS:

Look at the cartoon. Does a good lesson

need exact pre-planning? What do
teachers need to consider when planning
a lesson? What would be a generic
structure of a good lesson?
 WHAT IS A LESSON ?

• Things to be learned by the pupil

• Amount of teaching given at one time within the time assigned to it

• Systematic instruction
WHAT IS A PLAN?

• Formulated or organized way by which things are to be done

• A blue print for taking action

• A way of proceeding –relative position of points of the things to be done

 WHAT IS A LESSON PLAN?

• A guide, resource, and historical document reflecting one’s

teaching philosophy, student population, textbooks, and one’s
goals for the students.

• A lesson plan is a framework for a lesson. A lesson is like a

journey, and the lesson plan is the map. It shows you where
you start, where you finish and the route to take to get there.
 Lesson frameworks

Think about the metaphors for

a lesson and discuss which of
them seem closest to your
vision of an ideal lesson.
The writing of lessons has a number of important functions:

1. An aid to planning: writing down what you spect the students to be able to
do by the end of the lesson, and what you intend to do to make that possible,
helps you to think logically through the stages in relation to the time you have
available.

2. A working document: having something to refer to in the lesson helps you

keep you on target, although it should never prevent you from responding to the
needs of the moment, if necessary.

3. A record: suitably amended after the lesson, a lesson plan acts as a record of
what the class has done and might form the basis for a future lesson plan with a
similar class.
 What should be included in a lesson plan?

• Aims
Questions you need to ask (and answer) are not only what do I, the teacher, ams to do?
but also what do I expect the students to do and/or to have achieved by the end of the
lesson?

• Procedure
This is the part of the lesson plan which lays out the steps – stages in the lesson to ensure
that the aim(s) is achieved.

You should indicate:

The stage aim
The approximate time
The material
Perhaps details of any complex instructions or questions you plan to ask.
 For example
For the presentation practice of why don´t you…? A lesson of
35 minutes might be made up of the following stages.

Stage 1 (5 mins)
Intruduce the structures. Context: giving advice to someone who has a headache, and the
replies to the advice.
Stage 2 (5 mins)
Check students´ understanding and practise saying the model sentences.
Stage 3 (10 mins)
Guided practice, using cue cards – in open then closed pairs.
Stage 4 (10 mins)
Free practice using a new context: giving advice preparing for a test.
Stage 5 (5 mins)
Students make a record of the form and uses of the structure in their notebooks.
• 3 Approach (es) and activities
For each stage you will have to think what approach you are going to
use and what activities the students will do to achieve your aims.
- If my aim is to present a language ítem am I going to do it through a text, a
visual or oral context ( perhaps a dialogue or pictures) or through a problem-solving
activity, etc?

• 4 Materials, aids and equipment

The question you need to ask is:
At each stage which materials, aids and equipment do I need to achieve my
aims?
• 5 information about the students and the classroom circunmstances
It is worth noting at the top of every plan the level of the class, the
coursebook they are using, the size of the class and its composition,
especially if it is multinational.

• 6 Anticipated problems
Although you need to learn to be flexible in class, to be able to think on your feet
and adapt your lesson plan according to circumstances, you are less likely to be
thrown if you give some thought to some of the things that can go wrong.
“Good teachers plan their classes minutely so that
everything they do is prearranged. Once they are in the
classroom, they follow their plan without deviation,
always watching out for irrelevances which the
students may bring up and which would disrupt the
plan.” (Harmer 2000: 138)
 REASONS FOR PLANNING
For students:
• A plan shows that the teacher has devoted time to think about the class.
• It suggests a level of professionalism and a commitment to the kind of
research they might reasonably expect.
For teachers:
• A plan gives the lesson a framework, an overall shape.
• It has a destination which teachers want their students to reach, and some idea of how
they are going to get there.

In the classroom:
• A plan helps to remind teachers what they intended to do.
• Planning is important when a teacher is to be observed as part of an assessment or
performance review.
 Advance reflection

Needs and goals before

methods

based on Richards & Rodgers 1986: 159

Structuring a lesson – principles
different
different
methods
social pre
forms

Keep the students

and their needs in indivi-
mind! dual
during
learners
material
& media

scaffol-
ding post
 Models for lesson planning

Pre – while
(during) – post

Problems

Presentation –
Engage – Study –
Practice –
Activate (ESA)
Production (PPP)

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 What to consider?

 Engage: get the students interested in the class and hopefully

enjoying what they are doing.
 Study: it is a focus of language, such as grammar or
vocabulary and pronunciation.
 Activate: the students do writing and or speaking activities
which require them to use not only the language they are
studying that day, but also other language that they have
learnt.

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 METHOD
Any teaching Item has three stages

Presentation

Practice

Production
 Method

Presentation of the Items involves

• Preparing class
• make sure the concept is clear to the students
• giving model example of the item

• Practice the Teaching Item involves:

• repetition/ drilling
• discussion
• Worksheets
Production of the Teaching items:
Involves:
• Role play
• Games / dialogue etc
• Practicing the item
• Assessment
 Generic structure of a lesson plan

Consider the following scenario and discuss how teachers should

respond to it:

“[T]he teacher has planned that the students should prepare a dialogue and
then act it out, after which there is a reading test and some exercises for
them to get through. The teacher has allowed twenty minutes for dialogue
preparation and acting out. But when the students start working on the
activity, it is obvious they need more time. The teacher then discovers that
they would like to spend at least half the lesson on just the acting-out phase
which they find helpful and enjoyable. At that moment, he or she has to
decide whether to abandon the original plan and go along with the students’
wishes or whether it is better to press ahead regardless.” (Harmer 2000: 5)