Introduction

How do you decide what to teach on your first day or first week?

In this Module, we will help you plan a lesson for the level of the students in front of you. In many cases,
there will be different levels within one classroom and as you gain experience you will learn how to
differentiate activities to suit the needs of these students.

The most natural strategy for dealing with different levels is to encourage group work and also pair
stronger students with weaker students. This type of differentiation will allow both, gifted and talented
children, and weaker students to flourish together. It's good to remember that we all develop at different
speeds throughout our lives and it's natural for us to share knowledge and ideas.

TEFL Fullcircle can promise you one thing: you will feel tremendous after you complete your first
lesson. It's a mixture of achievement, happiness, relief and reward and it will make you want to go back
and do it again.

Let's imagine it's your first week and you have just arrived at your new school. Well done! Many schools
will already have students in levels and have a coursebook for you to follow; this will be a great help.
You'll find your first week a busy time; you'll be getting to know the staff and finding your way around at
the same time as getting used to your environment outside of your new school. I can remember when I
first moved to Vietnam. It was an exciting, exhilarating and visual stunning experience.

Most courses will have a syllabus which will correspond to the level of the students and a textbook which
will accompany the course.

A syllabus is a detailed list of topics which will be taught during the course, so that the learner can attain
a certain standard or level of English from Beginner to Advanced.

The syllabus acts as a road map, listing the major areas of grammar, vocabulary and other language areas
to be covered. The syllabus also sets targets for the students to achieve.

If you have a syllabus, this will help you a great deal and you can start to plan your first few lessons.

However, before you meet your students and assess what they are like, you won't be able to tailor-make
your lesson plan. So, it's important that you get to know your students first. You will be able to plan a
better lesson once you have found out more about your learners. Getting to know your students will
provide you with the starting point for caressing context in your lesson. You will need to think about your
learners interests and the kind of activities they do inside and outside of school. Many teachers plan
lessons to find out this kind of information in the first week of school.

Why plan a lesson?

You have completed the Class Management and Grammar Basics Modules. Well done!

It's now time to learn how to plan a lesson successfully.

In Module 1, we introduced Teaching Methodologies and Techniques which we will now re-visit to
refresh your memory on the different approaches to teaching. It should also be noted that at some point
in the future you will start to incorporate many of these different approaches into your lessons.

For the moment, though, we are going to focus on the Presentation-Practice-Production Technique.

An outstanding teacher has many accomplished qualities but, for TEFL Fullcircle, a teacher should try to
be authentic, funny, knowledgeable, and dynamic, and aim to gain the respect of the class. Underpinning
all of these qualities is planning.

Over time, when you have taught some lessons, you will be able to add more and more of your own
personality to the plans and you will feel more relaxed.

However, when you start, ensure you have a plan on your desk so that you can follow it step by step.
Print it in large type, so you can see it clearly, and include a few more activities than you may need, just
in case your students finish quickly or you complete the lesson too quickly. These things happen.

Planning a lesson is crucial to your success and planning will allow you to relax more and more, showing
your true personality and your real reasons for becoming a teacher: to help and guide others to learn
English.

A plan should be a written or electronic document on your tablet or laptop. Many of the schools you will
work at will have a set format to follow. However, most lesson plan documents contain the same
information. There are some sample lesson plans at the end of this Section which can be downloaded and
used.

A good lesson plan will contain: context, structure and practice. If another teacher is looking at your
lesson plan, he should know exactly what is going to happen in your lesson.

In Module 6 we will cover 3 areas:

Pre-Planning work to understand the context and the background of learners.

The Structure of the lesson.

Activities to use in the Practice and Production Stages.

Pre-Planning Work to build context:

Methods of language teaching

Timetable and classroom

Who are your students?

Age of your students

Level of your students

Class size

Differentiation

Learning styles

SMART aims and objectives

Potential problems

The Structure of the lesson:

Teaching techniques

Stages of the PPP Technique

Timing

Presentation Stage

Practice Stage

Production Stage

End of the lesson: Summary and Reflection

Activities to use in the Practice and Production Stages

Practice and Production Activities

A well-planned lesson will allow you to show your humour, personality and passion. It will let you have
fun and become an outstanding and inspirational teacher.

Let's show you how and give you some tips from real teaching experiences on how to create a
well-planned lesson within your safe and fun learning environment.
Unit 1: Pre-Planning Stages
In the Pre-Planning section, it's crucial that you try to understand all the elements that will help you gain
a better feeling of the context of the lesson. Therefore, it's critical that you know the age of your students
and their levels, or range of levels, so that you can plan some activities. Once you have been given your
timetable you will be able to ascertain the level and size of the groups. If you have large groups you will
have to think about re-arranging the layout of the room and using some larger group activities.

As you get to know your class, you will begin to understand who the gifted children are and you'll also
have a better idea of potential issues.

As mentioned in Module 2, success is the classroom is all about building solid relationships. Having a
sound plan will help you relax and build these relationships.

Let's now consider some of the key points you will need to consider to understand the context of the
classroom.

Pre-Planning Work to build context:

Methods of language teaching

Timetable and classroom

Who are your students?

Age of your students

Level of your students

Class size

Differentiation

Learning styles

SMART aims and objectives

Potential issues

You will have to plan different lessons for different ages and different levels of students. Unfortunately,
'one size' does not fit all and you will have to tailor-make each of your lessons to meet the needs of your
learners.

A small group of Business English learners will have very different needs to those of a large group of
teenage students. Young learners will require lots and lots of short, fun activities to help them keep their
focus compared with adult beginners who might feel self-conscious when trying to speak.You will find
that having a Wikispaces site will help you manage many different types of groups and allow you to
differentiate lessons. There is a wealth of information on the internet and your Wikispaces site will give
your learners a central location from which to locate games, activities and acquire knowledge.

In summary, you will have to adapt activities to meet these different needs. However, by having an
outstanding lesson plan and staying calm you will be able to cope and also have fun.