Planning Lessons and Courses

Based on British Council

Teaching for success: Lessons and Teaching
Lesson planning
Why plan?
Pre-reading stage – Silly Sally
 Procedure - Aim
• What is the teacher doing?
• Preparing her learners for a story (pre-reading)
• Show the cover of the book and introducing the
character.
• To create interest in the story
• Mime and ask questions to show meaning.
• Check that learners understand key vocabulary
• Show pictures from the story and ask learners to
put them in the order they think they will happen
• Provide learners with a reason for reading
 Aims
Aims can add focus to lessons and stages.
A stage can have more than one aim, as in the
lesson that you saw, but having a lot of different
aims can lead to a lack of focus.
It’s often a good idea to think about your main
lesson aim first, and then to ensure that the stages
in your lesson work towards that aim.
• In other words – think about what you want
your learners to achieve and how you will help
them achieve it. This should help you to plan your
lessons with your learners’ needs in mind.
Identify_the_aims.pdf
• Lesson plan with aims
 Other things to prepare
The teacher had planned a number of things
before the lesson:
1- The lesson plan (aims, stages, procedure and
interaction patterns)

What else needs to be planned?

 What else?
• Learners needs and interests
• Choose a topic which interests most learners and develops skills they need
• Examples
• A Haiku poem
• Grouping
• How will work with who in the group stages of the lesson
• Boardwork
• When and how to use the board in the lesson
• Instructions
• How to set up the activity so that learners know what to do
• Materials (sticky notes, a copy of the example poem and learners’ own
notebooks)
• What if’s
• What will I do of the activity finishes early? What can I cut out if it is taking
a long time?...
 What did the teacher prepare?
As you watch the lesson, decide if the teacher needed to prepare
these things before the lesson. Write examples where possible.
• Aims
• Stages
• Procedure
• Interaction patterns
• Learners’ needs and interests
• Examples
• Grouping
• Boardwork
• Instructions
• Materials
• What if’s
What did the teacher prepare?
 READING ACTIVITIES
We always read for a purpose, therefore we
should give our learners a purpose for reading.
 to check predictions,
 to find out what happens next,
 to answer a question or to find some specific
information.
 Reading activities
• Pre-reading activities
to raise interest in the text and prepare learners
to read
• Post-reading activities
to follow up on language work or the theme of
the text
 Before reading
• Give learners the question sheet and ask them to
guess the answers before reading the text.
• Tell learners the title and ask them to write
questions they have about the topic.
• Give learners the genre/title/illustrations/key
words from the text, or the cover/blurb from a
book, and ask them to guess the content.
• Learners read a set of questions and identify
what kind of answer they should look for, e.g. a
date, amount of money, someone’s name, a city,
etc. before reading the text.
 While reading
• Give learners some short news articles and ask them
to categorise them into international, national, local
and business news. Give them a short time to do this.
• Give learners a brochure/website advertising various
products and ask them to find particular details about
the product e.g. price, size, etc.
• Give learners a text with connectives removed
(however, therefore, on the other hand, although,
etc.). Ask them to put these words back in the right
place.
• Give learners a newspaper or magazine and ask them
to find which pages the following are on: weather
report, TV schedule, business news, readers’ letters,
etc.
 While reading
• Learners to read the first sentence of each paragraph,
then say what the whole text is about.
• Give learners a set of instructions to follow (directions
/ making a paper aeroplane, etc).
• Give learners a set of different short texts and ask
them where they would find them, e.g. a shopping list
(in a handbag / on a phone), an advert (in a magazine),
a public notice (in a park), a text message, etc.
• A reading race, where learners have to find specific
information from a text faster than other learners.
• Give learners a timetable and ask them questions e.g.
what time does the bus to London leave?
 While reading

• Learners read an article and think of a title for it.

• Learners read a text with a few sentences removed.
They put the sentences in the correct places.
• Give learners a cut-up text to put in order.
• Give learners a text with reference words underlined
(this, it, he, she, those, etc.). They identify the noun
that each word refers to.
• Give learners some definitions and ask them to find
corresponding words in the text.
• Choose difficult words from the text and ask learners
to choose the correct meaning for each of them, from
choices a, b, c, d.
 After reading
• Learners cover the text and tell each other what
they can remember in pairs.
• Learners act out a dialogue from the text.
• Learners discuss questions related to the topic of
the text.
• Learners write their own questions for the text.
• Learners write an alternative ending.
• Learners write their own version of the text.
• A grammar activity which focuses on language
included in the text (e.g. past simple in a story).
Course planning
 Sample of course plan
• Sample of course plan
Useful links