Best Teaching Practices

Click here STRATEGIES FOR LESSON PLANNING  

A lesson plan is the instructor’s road map of what students need to learn and how it will be done effectively during the class time. Before you plan your lesson, you will first need to identify the learning objectives for the class meeting.  Then, you can design appropriate learning activities and develop strategies to obtain feedback on student learning. A successful lesson plan addresses and integrates these three key components:

• Objectives for student learning
• Teaching/learning activities
• Strategies to check student understanding

Using the PPP Approach

There are various language teaching methodologies that you can use when planning your lessons. The following is a brief explanation on how to use the most simple and common one, the PPP Approach to Communicative Language Teaching. The 3Ps stands for Presentation, Practice, and Production.

Presentation

The presentation stage involves explaining to your students what the goals of the lesson are, so that they can understand what it is you are teaching and why. This is the stage where you, as the teacher, will explain/introduce the new vocabulary/key expressions to your students.

Practice

The practice stage involves students practicing the target language in a controlled manner (by themselves, in pairs, or in a group setting). Activities meant for drilling the language may be used to guide the students in a more productive manner. Activities may include repeating the target language after the teacher either individually or in chorus, completing sentences or dialogues, asking and answering questions, and matching sentences.

Production

Students are encouraged to make use of the language in a less controlled manner. The aim is for them to make the language “their own” by providing a suitable context for usage. Typical activities for this stage are role play, communications task, and Q&A games.

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN

Sample Lesson plan

Lesson Materials: Projector, laptop computer, PowerPoint presentation, handouts, Activity cards

Greeting (2 min): Teacher greets the class, engages in small talk with the class

	How was your weekend?
	What did you do?
	How’s the weather today?

Warm up (3 min): The goal is to get the students to think about English
Last Letter

	Teacher writes a word on the board, for example “TIGER”
	Student must take turns making a new word using the last letter of the previous word, for example “TIGER”→”RAT”

Presentation (10 min): Lesson on “Giving advice”

	Teach the target language of the day using the PowerPoint presentation
	Target language: “I think you should…”
	Teacher models the language and the class repeats it

Practice (10 min): Students work in pairs to complete the handout

Production (15 min): Problems and Advice Activity

	Split class into groups of 4-6
	Put a stack of cards in the middle. Each student takes turns picking up a card from the stack.
	Cards will have a problem on it, for example: Problem: I feel sick
	Place a stack of Activity cards in the middle of each group (about 25-30 cards).
	Each student takes turns picking up a card and reads the problem. They have to then give a piece of advice that addresses that problem.
	If the advice is appropriate, they get to keep the card.
	Cards will have various points on it (dependent upon difficulty)
	There will be BONUS cards that allow students to steal points, double points etc.
	At the end of the game, the student with the most points wins the game.

Review (5 min): Quick review of today’s lesson

	Elicit responses from the students
	Or a short review quiz (Adapted from : www.iloveesl.com/teach-work-live-korea/lesson-planning-teachers.php)