Help at Hand Lesson Planning
Help at Hand Lesson Planning
This series of articles from the British Council aims to help you think about your teaching and bring new ideas and activities into your classroom.
The series covers topics including homework, working with large classes and finding resources. Today we look at lesson planning.
Nasreen, Bangladesh Jotra, India 5 – 10 Introducing topic Students work in groups to answer Group work
questions 1–5 on page 56
Is the textbook a lesson plan?
25 – 30 Reading tasks Ss read article on Students work
Everybody’s situation is different but usually
page 57–58 individually
we are given a syllabus and often a set
textbook to follow. The textbook gives us a
framework and tells us what language we need
to cover, but it doesn’t always let us practise all
4 skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening.
Writing a lesson plan helps us make sure that A classroom activity - backs to the board
our students get the practice they need to A warmer at the start of the lesson is a good way to get students in the right mood and focused.
develop their communicative skills. Here’s a simple activity you can use to get students warmed up and review vocabulary from an
earlier lesson.
What goes in the lesson plan?
n Students work in two or three groups. One volunteer from each group stands or sits with their
Different teachers write their plans in different
back to the board.
ways but here are some things to think about
when you write your plan:
Aims: We need to know what we want our
students to do by the end of the lesson. In our
plan we might write:
By the end of the lesson students will be able
to …. use three ways to ask permission:
Can I ..? Could I ..? May I ..?
Resources: We have the textbook but what
other resources can I use that my students will
be interested in? Remember that ‘resources’ can
be many things – you, your students and their
world, your story-telling or diagrams and
pictures on the board – anything!
Stages: How can you help your students
practise all 4 skills in your lesson?
Think about a warmer, teaching new language,
time for students to practise, time for revision,
and homework.
Interaction: A balance between you at the front
working with the whole class as well as pair
work and group work in other parts of the n The teacher writes a word on the board and the group members explain the word to the
lesson. How can we deal with more advanced volunteer until he or she guess the word and that team wins a point.
students and help the weaker ones? n Change volunteers and repeat for 6 or 7 words.
Most important is to think about what our n You can have a noisy game where students shout out their clues or a quieter, more controlled
students are learning, and try to keep game where they take turns to speak.
them interested.
Want to find more teaching tips? Visit www.teachingenglish.org.uk © British Council 2011