GLOBAL TEFL – Module 3 video lesson plan example

Name: Shane Richards Date:

Learning Objective: “Birthday plans” - Students will learn/review simple future

with “going to”. Focus is on question form. Materials:
 Book: Touchstone 2 (US English version), Chapter 4, Page 35/36.
Level: A2 (mixed ability students, A2-C2)  6 photocopies, so they don't damage their books by writing in them.
 CD 1 track 35
Ages: Teens to 50s
Length: 90 mins.

Notes for TEFL trainees

Background: “Going to” was chosen because the local (Spanish) speakers tend to use “will” for everything related to future; making them sound like airport or
train station announcers in their everyday speech. In the last class, we practised ordinal numbers, dates, months and years, as a preparation for this class. The
next class, we are going to bring this little adventure to a practical conclusion - plan a party for an event of the students' choice.

Knowing your students: The students that you are about to watch are fairly quiet, studious and they respond better to more traditional teacher-centred activities
rather than games and role plays. Therefore, we'll leave them in their chairs next to their study partners as much as possible, rather than embarrass or annoy them
by getting them up all the time, or being too “energetic”. Having said that, Giovanni (one of the students) really likes getting up and writing on the board, so we'll
use him later on to provide a fresh face up front.
We have a great relationship so there's a lot of jokes, sometimes at my or a student's expense. In South America you'll find classes to be very laid back affairs, and
people become friends very quickly.

Timing and delivery: You may notice a lot of silence in the video. This is because you need to give language students a lot of time to internalize things on their
own. 20 seconds may seem like a long time to wait for an answer, but a language student often needs that amount of time to produce an answer, especially at the
beginning of class, so be patient. It may seem a little slow, but to the students it's a nice, easy pace for an early morning class. If they were all advanced students
or more outgoing personalities, my delivery and pacing would have been much faster, my voice lower in pitch, and I would be using more advanced vocabulary
and idioms.

What to look out for: I purposefully decided to do a very simple class to give you a firm grounding in the basics of teaching. It is a class new teachers usually do
when using a coursebook. You can see examples of:
 Appropriate attire and personal presentation for males.
 Adapting and interpreting material from a book.
 Teacher-lead presentations.
 Student-discovery presentations.
 How to easily elicit/present a new tense without using grammar, using only two sentences (read about this in “Mistakes and problems” below).

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  Eliciting from the students whenever possible.
 Leading questions.
 Simple explanations.
 Pair work.
 Board work.
 Using gestures.
 Allowing students to take over the class.
 PPP used in planning and during the class.

Presentation, Practice, Production (PPP) in action:

 The lesson as a whole is based on this.
 Each stage is a small, nested PPP form in itself. For example, the practice stage is divided up into structured, semi-structured and unstructured, providing
the PPP structure.
 Each of the individual exercises uses this form.
 It is used to “micro-teach” (teaching/reviewing/reminding/eliciting other small things to individual students as needed).
 It is used to elicit answers to individual questions.
 It is even used down to the detailed level of correcting the pronunciation of an individual sound.
 It is designed so that the unstructured, fluency activity is the “production” part of the practice stage, as well as being the production part of the entire class.
After a while you'll learn tricks like this and apply it in your own planning.

Stage Teacher´s Procedure – Teacher Procedure - Students T/S Ratio

objective (How you would teach) (What would students be
doing)
Warm- Activate 50/50
up/review previously Review and drill the following vocabulary to prepare the
learned students for the class. As a class, they will be giving
vocabulary answers to questions and
that we will be Dates (ordinal numbers) prompts, creating lists and
using during Test them by eliciting the current date. then drilling through them.
20 minutes the lesson, so
that they can Draw a podium and Olympic rings. Get 3 students to run Speaking and reading - some
concentrate around a chair and put them in order. Elicit may take notes.
on the “first/second/third”. Draw students’ attention to the
language I'm drawing on the board.
introducing.

They all like Months

making lists. Elicit spellings to the board.

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 Need to check Extra: Years
spellings of Make sure they practise “Two thousand and twelve” and
months. not “Twenty twelve”.

Introduce Students predict the topic and 80/20

Introduction today's subject Find out from the students whose birthday is next and try listen to the introduction.
2 minutes matter. elicit from the lowest-level student an example sentence
in the positive:
1) to ascertain if the first, teacher-lead presentation is
necessary
2) to provide a link to the following statement:

“Today we're talking about birthdays, and making plans

for birthdays.”

Here I want to After seeing an example in 40/60

Presentation draw from the the positive, the students will
Teacher: “Sara is in class today.”
students' provide the examples,
15 minutes collective body Teacher: “But, she has a plan for tomorrow. She plans to reacting to carefully worded
of knowledge go to a party! So we say:” questions.
as much as
+ “Sara is going to a party tomorrow.”
possible.

Make sure
that they Teacher: “Can anyone tell me a negative?”
understand Student: - “Sara is not going to a party tomorrow.”
and can do
some basic
vocal Teacher: “What about a question?”
production
before moving Student: “Is Sara going to a party tomorrow?”
on. Teacher elicits/prompts: + “Yes, she is.”
- “No, she isn't.”

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 So, on the board, we are left with:

Sara is in class today. She plans to go to a party

tomorrow.
+ Sara is going to a party tomorrow.
- Sara is not going to a party tomorrow.
? Is Sara going to a party tomorrow?
Students will pre-read a
+ Yes, she is. dialogue that will be used in
the practice section.
- No, she isn't.

Handout - pages 35-36

Give students photocopies so they don't damage their
books.
Give them a moment to look over the material on page
35.
Prompt students to predict what the story is about.
Skim the text and ask them what the story really is.
Students are asked to find positive/negative/question
forms in the text. There are no negative sentences so the
students will be asked to create one.
Ask a few leading questions using “going to” in order to
check their understanding.
For example:
“What are they going to give their dad?”
“Their dad's birthday is...when?”
“Where is the party going to be?”

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 Students will practise a 90/10
Practice dialogue in pairs.

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45 minutes Structured activity
No group reading as their pronunciation is excellent and
the text is quite easy.
Provide Students will be paired and read the dialogue.
structured
language for Students will work 90/10
them to follow. Students to do a sentence-matching exercise - page 36, individually.
exercise 4.
They have to match 2 halves of questions. For example:
A) Are you going to 1) spend your birthday with?

B) Who are you going 2) a present to anyone this year?

to
90/10
Second C) Are you are going 3) buy anyone a present this year?
to give
structured Students will work as a
exercise to group.
give me time
While students are doing the exercise, write the next
to prepare
exercise on the board - page 36, exercise 2.
board.

Semi- Semi-structured activity

structured -
Students now do the cloze (gap-fill) exercise - page 36,
different Students will be speaking in
exercise 2.
grouping for pairs. 100/0
variety. Do this vocally as a class.
Get a student up to write the answers on the board. The
class has to shout out the answers. Teacher does not
interfere.

The
unstructured
activity is Unstructured activity
based on the
two prior Use the questions produced from both the structured and
activities so semi-structured exercises as cue sheets for the students
to do pair work. Each student has to ask and answer the

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 that they are questions. Students are free to extend or limit the
reusing the conversation as they wish.
exact same
vocabulary.

Evaluation Make sure Students will be answering 50/50

every student Check some sample answers to the questions we just questions from the teacher.
gives an used.
answer to
5 minutes check Any problems that arise at this stage will be corrected
retention, and drilled as a class so that the students' last memory of
understanding the class will be of speaking the target language
and vocal correctly.
production of
the grammar Note if any of them stray back to using “will”.
objective:
“going to”. No functions to test, only a topic.

Give them an 0/100

Homework activity for As I had the students do the book activities vocally, and
further we skipped a few of the other activities, students are to
1 minute practice. complete any unfinished work in their handouts.

“Next class, we are going to talk about other celebrations

and then make real plans for a party. See you later!”

Visual aids:

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