2014 Spring PT CELTA Guide to Lesson

Planning Frameworks

Page

How to use this document 2

Language Lesson Frameworks

Lesson Framework: Test/Teach/Test 3

Lesson Framework: Text-Based Presentation 4

Lesson Framework: Presentation-Practice-Production / Situational Presentation 5

Skills Lesson Frameworks

Lesson Framework: Receptive Skills (Listening / Reading)

6

Lesson Framework: Writing 7

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How to use this document / how to approach lesson planning from now on:

1. Make sure you are clear on the main aim of your lesson, as given to you by your
tutor.

· If it’s a language aim (grammar, vocabulary, functional language), turn to the language lesson
frameworks (p.3-5)
· If it’s a skills aim (reading, listening, writing), turn to the skills lessons frameworks (p.6-7)

2. Decide on which framework seems most suitable given the specific material
allocated (where relevant). Decide how much you need to adapt / create.

· Sometimes it is already laid out logically in the book. Often it is not.

· Decide whether the exercises in the book are adequate for your lesson aim.
· Don’t feel you have to totally reinvent the wheel – if there are good exercises there in the
coursebook or workbook, that can fit into the framework, use them.
· For language lessons, decide on the pros and cons of adopting one framework over another.
For example, for text-based you sometimes need to create your own text...but if you do this
effectively, you have contextualised your language to help support the teach stage .

3. Before ALP (assisted lesson planning), feel free to check with your tutor any initial
questions you may have. For instance:

· Do you think test/teach/test is better or text-based?

· I’m not sure this is a good gist task...should I think of another?
· Can I make my own controlled practice or should I use this?

4. Using the information in this document, prepare yourself for your official ALP slot.

· Try to strike a balance for ALP – prepare what you can do, but be prepared for the tutor to
suggest changes. Fundamental changes are less likely if you have followed the advice in the
frameworks.
· Come to ALP with at least a thorough analysis of the language (where relevant), a sketch of
the procedure and main tasks created. Visuals, flashcards etc – these can be selected /
created after ALP in most cases.

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Lesson Framework: Test/Teach/Test

Stage name Possible Points to bear in mind

timings and
interactions

At this stage you want to set the context and grab the learners’ attention. It’s really
important to involve all learners, hence the value of a pair or group disussion task related
Lead-in 5 minutes
to your context. A good template is to “hook” the learners in open class (e.g. a brief story
OC-SS-OC or visual), then offer personalised discussion, before brief feedback. Remember that the
lead-in is about interesting the learners in the topic – don’t get too preoccupied with the
target language yet.

This is where you test the learners through a focused task – it allows you to see what
they do or don’t know, so test all learners’ knowledge, monitor carefully to see how they
Test 1 10 minutes
are doing and inform / ready yourself for the teach stage. Most learners prefer to have a
(diagnostic test) S-SS chance to work alone and then check together.

The test feedback is also the teach stage i.e. they should be integrated and considered
the same stage: as you check answers to the first test, teach them what they need to
Test feedback / 10 minutes
know. A good rule of thumb is to work through meaning then form then pronunciation of
teach stage OC your target language – the “order of clarification”. How much you do of each will
depend on your actual target language and what’s difficult about it. Use your planning of
anticipated problems and your monitoring of Test 1 to help here. Keep learners as
involved as possible through concept checking, elicitation of form, and drilling of
pronunciation.

This stage helps promote accurate and confident use of the target language, now that
you have clarified it – as such, you need a task that requires / forces use of the target
Test 2 / controlled 10 minutes
language in a restricted and focused way. This task should be more demanding than Test
practice 1 and should provide you with clear evidence they have understood and can use the
S-SS-OC language accurately. Your role while monitoring is to be more hands on: micro-teach and
correct the learners as they are doing the task – a good way to do this is to help them
recall what you established at the teach stage i.e. guide them rather than just telling
them the right answer. In feedback you should ensure all students have the right
answer. There are various ways of conducting feedback – check with your tutor.

If controlled practice is more limited and accuracy-focused, freer practice is more open
and fluency-focused – communicative, personalised (sharing opinions and / or personal
Freer practice 10 minutes
experiences and / or allowing room for creative experimentation with the language).
Communicative means the language is used for a reason or purpose – that the learners
SSS-OC need to speak and listen to each other so think about what the goal of the activity might
be. Even though this stage is “fluency-focused” it is not a fluency stage in the pure sense
– the learners should be required to use the target language, and not just once or twice,
but in a fairly sustained way; make sure that by design your task necessitates use of the
language and / or that your instructions make this clear. Monitor carefully but not
intrusively – unlike controlled practice, your role here is not to “correct” but to “collect”
information. Use this to inform feedback:
- Content Feedback: feedback on what the learners said or found out. Focus
this on the goal of the task where appropriate.
- Language feedback: the icing on the cake, and something to aim for – let the
learners know how they did with the target language, praising them and
offering some delayed correction of errors.
While content feedback is essential (show the learners you were listening; value their
ideas), language feedback is desirable and something to aim for if you have time.

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Lesson Framework: Text-Based Presentation

Stage name Possible Points to bear in mind

timings and
interactions

At this stage you want to set the context and grab the learners’ attention. It’s really
important to involve all learners, hence the value of a pair or group disussion task related to
Lead-in 5 minutes
your context. A good template is to “hook” the learners in open class (e.g. a brief story or
OC-SS-OC visual), then offer personalised discussion, before brief feedback. Remember that the lead-in
is about interesting the learners in the topic – don’t get too preoccupied with the target
language yet.

A lead-in is a general introduction to the topic – the orientation phase introduces the
learners to the written or spoken text they will process in order to expose them to the target
Orientation to
language. This is important but should be brief e.g. let the students know what the text is,
Text 5 minutes what it is about, who it involves and so on. Try to elicit from them to involve them, but don’t
OC spend too long before getting down to the reading / listening task.

This is optional – and may take no longer than the previous stage; both stages together
probably add up to no more than 5 minutes as you have more important stuff to get to. You
(Pre-teach of
may decide it is necessary to pre-teach one or two blocking words from the text; for more on
Vocabulary) this, see the comment on this stage in the receptive skills framework page.

The purpose of the text in text-based presentation is to provide context to help the students
understand the target language. To do this, they need to understand the gist of the text itself
Gist Task 5 minutes
– so it is important to give a content-focused gist task that encourages them to get an overall
understanding of the text (again, for more on this, see the receptive skills framework page).
S-SS-OC Let them read / listen to the text alone, then quickly check their answers together, before
brief feedback. Again, do keep this stage brief. You have the key stages yet to come.

You now need to focus the learners on the target language embedded in the text. You can do
this in various ways e.g. draw attention to language bolded in the text, get them to match
Focus on 10 minutes
words to definitions, ask them to guess the words from context. Often, it’s more time
Language / Teach efficient to just “extract” the words or the target sentence and get down to the teaching –
Stage OC the main aim of this stage i.e. clarifying the meaning, form and pronunciation of the target
(but can language. A good rule of thumb is to work through meaning then form then pronunciation of
your target language – the “order of clarification”. How much you do of each will depend on
vary)
your actual target language and what’s difficult about it. Use your planning of anticipated
problems to help here. Keep learners as involved as possible through concept checking,
elicitation of form, and drilling of pronunciation.

This stage helps promote accurate and confident use of the target language, now that you
have clarified it – as such, you need a task that requires / forces use of the target language in
Controlled 10 minutes
a restricted and focused way. This task should be more demanding than Test 1 and should
practice provide you with clear evidence they have understood and can use the language accurately.
S-SS-OC Your role while monitoring is to be more hands on: micro-teach and correct the learners as
they are doing the task – a good way to do this is to help them recall what you established at
the teach stage i.e. guide them rather than just telling them the right answer. In feedback
you should ensure all students have the right answer. There are various ways of conducting
feedback – check with your tutor.

4
 If controlled practice is more limited and accuracy-focused, freer practice is more open and
fluency-focused – communicative, personalised (sharing opinions and / or personal
Freer practice 10 minutes
experiences and / or allowing room for creative experimentation with the language).
Communicative means the language is used for a reason or purpose – that the learners need
SSS-OC to speak and listen to each other so think about what the goal of the activity might be. Even
though this stage is “fluency-focused” it is not a fluency stage in the pure sense – the
learners should be required to use the target language, and not just once or twice, but in a
fairly sustained way; make sure that by design your task necessitates use of the language and
/ or that your instructions make this clear. Monitor carefully but not intrusively – unlike
controlled practice, your role here is not to “correct” but to “collect” information. Use this to
inform feedback:
- Content Feedback: feedback on what the learners said or found out. Focus this on
the goal of the task where appropriate.
- Language feedback: the icing on the cake, and something to aim for – let the
learners know how they did with the target language, praising them and offering
some delayed correction of errors.
While content feedback is essential (show the learners you were listening; value their ideas),
language feedback is desirable and something to aim for if you have time.

Lesson Framework: Presentation-Practice-Production /

Situational Presentation
Stage name Possible Points to bear in mind
timings and
interactions

At this stage you want to set the context and grab the learners’ attention. It’s really
important to involve all learners, hence the value of a pair or group disussiondiscussion task
Lead-in 5 minutes
related to your context. A good template is to “hook” the learners in open class (e.g. a brief
OC-SS-OC story or visual), then offer personalised discussion, before brief feedback. Remember that
the lead-in is about interesting the learners in the topic – don’t get too preoccupied with the
target language yet. As you are about to embark in the next stage on a rather teacher-
focused stage, it’s important to incorporate pair or group work here so all learners are
involved.

Set Context This is labelled “set context” – however, the general context will have been set in the lead-in;
this stage is where the teacher builds a situation with the learners into which the target
5 minutes
language is embedded – so context here means the specific context for the TL, the story that
OC helps clarify its meaning. For example “used to”: in the lead-in, you talk about memories /
nostalgia in general; in this stage, the teacher (with the involvement of the learners) outlines
some nostalgic memories in a way that is a) interesting b) leads to the emergence of one or
more clear target sentences that the context (story) have helped clarify. As a technique, this
is much harder than it sounds – it is a teacher-focused stage but needs to remain involving
for the learners (getting learners to predict you story via visuals and prompt questions helps);
and your story needs to really help the learners have a good guess at the target language
before the explicit focus on it in the next stage.

Here, you “zoom in” on your target language. Put or re-elicit your target sentences onto the
whiteboard. Then systematically clarify meaning / form / pronunciation of the target
Language 10 minutes
structure.
Clarification / OC M: concept check via questions, timelines if appropriate. Exploit your context to help clarify.
Teach Stage F: elicit the formula for the target structure, highlight anything key for learners to note.
P: model, highlight, drill the target structure.

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 This stage helps promote accurate and confident use of the target language, now that you
have clarified it – as such, you need a task that requires / forces use of the target language in
Controlled 10 minutes
a restricted and focused way. This task should be more demanding than Test 1 and should
practice provide you with clear evidence they have understood and can use the language accurately.
S-SS-OC Your role while monitoring is to be more hands on: micro-teach and correct the learners as
they are doing the task – a good way to do this is to help them recall what you established at
the stage i.e. guide them rather than just telling them the right answer. In feedback you
should ensure all students have the right answer. There are various ways of conducting
feedback – check with your tutor.

If controlled practice is more limited and accuracy-focused, freer practice is more open and
fluency-focused – communicative, personalised (sharing opinions and / or personal
Freer practice 10 minutes
experiences and / or allowing room for creative experimentation with the language).
Communicative means the language is used for a reason or purpose – that the learners need
SSS-OC to speak and listen to each other so think about what the goal of the activity might be. Even
though this stage is “fluency-focused” it is not a fluency stage in the pure sense – the
learners should be required to use the target language, and not just once or twice, but in a
fairly sustained way; make sure that by design your task necessitates use of the language and
/ or that your instructions make this clear. Monitor carefully but not intrusively – unlike
controlled practice, your role here is not to “correct” but to “collect” information. Use this to
inform feedback:
- Content Feedback: feedback on what the learners said or found out. Focus this on
the goal of the task where appropriate.
- Language feedback: the icing on the cake, and something to aim for – let the
learners know how they did with the target language, praising them and offering
some delayed correction of errors.
While content feedback is essential (show the learners you were listening; value their ideas),
language feedback is desirable and something to aim for if you have time.

6
Lesson Framework: Receptive Skills (Listening / Reading)

Stage Name Possible Points to bear in mind

timings and
interactions

At this stage you want to set the context and grab the learners’ attention. It’s really
important to involve all learners, hence the value of a pair or group disussion task related to
Lead-in 5 minutes
your context. A good template is to “hook” the learners in open class (e.g. a brief story or
OC-SS-OC visual), then offer personalised discussion, before brief feedback. Remember that the lead-in
is about interesting the learners in the topic. If your text is an article about holiday
destinations, some discussion of holidays would seem approppriate.

A lead-in is a general introduction to the topic – the orientation phase introduces the
learners to the specific text you will spend most of the lesson looking at. This can be brief e.g.
Orientation to 5 minutes
let the students know what the text is, what it is about, who it involves and so on; but it pays
Text OC to spend a couple of minutes building interest here, even including a student-centred
discussion task (e.g. predicting what they might read / hear) – it pays because time spend
building up to the text in an engaging way makes students “hungry” to read or listen to it.
This may not be 5 minutes – you can orient in 1 or 2 if you prefer, but make sure you include
this stage and that by the end of it, the students a)know exactly what they will read/listen to
b) are eager to do so.

In a 45 minute receptive skills lesson based on the CELTA template, we aim to provide
practice of two subskills – typically gist reading / listening, then more intensive and detailed
Gist Task 5 minutes
reading / listening practice. So the first task – the gist – should be a) low demand b) require
S-SS-OC the learners to pay attention to the whole text c) allow them to get an understanding of the
overall meaning of the text; not focus too much on specific items, in other words. Give them
a clear gist task – often one overall question that requires them to process the whole text in
a low demand way (e.g. “read the restaurant review – would you like to go there and why?”)

This is an optional stage – you may feel there are one, or two, or three words the learners
have to know to get a better understanding of the text through the detail task (we call these
(Pre-teach of Max 5
“blocking words”). So you “pre-teach” (i.e. teach before the detail stage) these words. Be
Vocabulary) minutes; as careful though - this is a skills practice lesson so it’s important not to get too bogged down or
short as preoccupied with vocabulary. The learners will encounter a large number of words they
possible don’t know in the text – but do they need to know them all in order to complete the detail
task? Usually not, and it’s arguably more authentic to let learners devise their own strategies
for dealing with unknown words (e.g. ignore / guess). Keep this stage efficient and involving.
OC One of the best ways of doing this involves the following convey / elicit / check template:
- use a prompt (pic, definition, situation) to convey the meaning of the word
- elicit the word based on this; as soon as it’s clear they don’t know it, give the
word
- quickly check understanding where necessary via a CCQ or two
- don’t worry about form / pron / appropriacy – meaning is key, though you may
decide it’s useful to highlight pron in a listening lesson pre-teach phase

In some ways, the key stage of a receptive skills lesson – so spend time planning it and
ensure you complete this stage, devoting enough time to it. Here, you want the learners to
Detail Task 15 minutes
read / listen more carefully to the text. To do this, they need a task while reading / listening
to focus them on details of the text – often true or false statements, or comprehension
S-SS-OC questions or note-taking in a grid. Give them sufficient time to complete this. As with gist,
learners need a chance to do this alone first, then a chance to check their answers together,
before you confirm and explore the correct ideas in feedback.

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 This is where you exploit the topic of the text for practice of productive skills i.e. speaking /
writing. Often this is a role play, a discussion, a survey, a debate, or some creative or genre-
Follow-up Activity 10 minutes
based writing that uses the text as a springboard. This stage relates to your subsidiary aim: it
OC-SS-OC is a desirable stage to include, as it rounds off the lesson very nicely, providing a varied
counterpoint to the receptive skills development. However, it is not essential – you should
plan it, but if the learners are having difficulty with the reading or listening don’t rush
through feedback to get this stage in. Often, you have less time than anticipated for this
stage – so put this in your anticipated problems and solutions…how will you adapt it if you
find yourself short of time?

Lesson Framework: Writing

Please note this is one version of a writing lesson – this framework is flexible e.g. you may not use a model
text. You can discuss this with your tutor before ALP.

Stage Name Possible Points to bear in mind

Timings and
interactions

At this stage you want to set the context and grab the learners’ attention. It’s really
important to involve all learners, hence the value of a pair or group disussion task related to
Lead-in 5 minutes
your context. A good template is to “hook” the learners in open class (e.g. a brief story or
OC-SS-OC visual), then offer personalised discussion, before brief feedback. Remember that the lead-in
is about interesting the learners in the topic. You should also make sure you link this stage to
the next i.e. the model text.

For many types of writing, it pays for learners to see an example – a model text. They need
to read this for content before looking at its features. So, for insance, if your students are
Reading of Model 5 minutes
going to write a letter / email of complaint, you could give them one to read first. As always
Text S-SS-OC they need a task e.g. what was the worst thing about this hotel, in your opinion? and a
chance to read alone, check before brief feedback

“Language Preparation” here means drawing attention to language from the model that may
be useful for their own writing e.g.
Language 10
· fixed expressions they can use
Preparation minutes · discourse features e.g. how many paragraphs there are and what each one is for,
OC salutations
This is a teach stage but conisder how you can keep it student-centred and involving.

At this stage, learners need to start brainstorming ideas for their own writing. I suggest they
do this in pairs or threes – with the same people they will work with in the next stage.
Content 5 minutes
Students usually need some support when thiking of ideas so guiding questions are useful
Preparation SS e.g. for the letter of complaint you could have them think about where they were, what went
wrong in the hotel, what compensation they want.

Now it’s time to write. Tips:

Writing 10
· have a template / clean sheet for learners to use
minutes
· let them do this in pairs or threes – it’s more communicative
SS · when setting it up, give them a goal / outcome; let them know their writing will be
read by other students with a goal in mind e.g. we’ll choose the most powerful
letter of complaint
· monitor and help them where necessary
· remind them when time is running out

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 Once they have finished, it’s time for two types of feedback. The first is essential, the second
is desirable:
Writing feedback 5-10
minutes? Content Feedback – get students to read each others’
(variable) · swap with another pair or
· pin them around the room to read all
· they need to have a reason to read the other pieces of writing.

Language Feedback – while monitoring, pick out language that you can put on the board
· examples of good language
· examples of errors – students correct them in open class or in pairs before open
class feedback.