Here you are going to write a lesson plan for a large class of 60 students. The plan is 60 minutes long, and so don’t forget to put the timing for each stage, and the student/teacher interaction too. Note; S-T & T-S is not suitable for a large class, you need to get the students in small groups right from the start, and interacting in those groups as soon as possible.
To write your lesson plan you can use either a PPP structure or a skills-based lesson plan structure. Here’s a quick reminder of the stages you will have to include (don’t forget you can find detailed information on these lesson plan structures in units 2 and 6 of the Methodology course). So first you need to decide which lesson plan structure you will use – you only need to choose one structure here.
See below what you should include depending on the structure you choose:
PPP
- Lead-in
Use this to warm the students up for the lesson, grab their attention and find out what they already know about the TL. Remember not to teach anything here.
- Presentation
Teach the meaning, pronunciation and form of the TL. Elicit as much as possible and don’t forget the concept questions . Remember you need to find a way for your sts to discover the meaning themselves rather than just tell them.
- Practice (controlled)
Students practise using the TL themselves in structured activities.
- Production (free)
When you are happy the students have grasped what you have taught them they can practise using the TL in a free way using everything else that they know. This should be a speaking activity and students should use the language naturally.
Lesson topic ideas
You need to do a lesson based around functions – i.e. how to do something. You can choose any function you like – here are a couple of ideas:
Making a complaint
Giving Opinions
Making requests
Agreeing and disagreeing
Making excuses
Don’t forget as target language here, you will teach between 8 and 10 useful phrases rather than individual words for the function you choose.
Skills
- Lead-in
Here we introduce the theme of the listening or reading to get the students “contextualised”. We don’t need to focus on the skill yet.
- Pre-teach vocabulary
Try to get students to work together to work out the meanings of some tricky or unknown words from your text or listening resource.
- Predictive activity
The students should predict something they think they will hear or see in listening or text.
- Listening/reading for gist
Students should do a task that checks their general understanding of the listening or text.
- Listening/reading for specific information
Students should do a task where they read or listen for specific information.
- Follow-on task
This task is a continuation of the theme and should be a speaking or a writing activity.
Lesson topic ideas
Choose a listening or reading resource to base your lesson around. You don’t have to include the actual resource here but clearly explain what it is. Here are a couple of ideas:
A newspaper headline about a popular musician
A sports commentary from an important national game
A short clip from a film or TV programme
A review of a new games console
Now you can write your lesson plan. Here are a few things to remember:
Your students should be put into groups right at the beginning and they should work in these mini-groups throughout the lesson. You can put groups together for some activities but avoid whole class activities. You need to describe the group work in each of your activities.
All the students should participate as much as possible and aim for as much STT as possible.
Elicit – don’t lecture the students.
Sample Solution
