Anyone who has been through teacher training cannot fail to forget those lesson plans – they had to be written up for every lesson on every teaching day! Although they are a bit of a pain in the neck, they are, nevertheless, an essential component of good teaching practice.
How should you, as a novice EFL teacher, go about making a lesson plan?
As it concerns the actual lesson plan itself, this could be written up on a word processor template, as follows:
1. The top of each page should have the lesson title or syllabus reference along with the learning objective. This is then followed by the date and time of the lesson.
2. The left hand column should have the time that is to be allocated to each component part of the lesson.
3. Against each time entry, comments should be made that clearly describe what is to be done in that time interval, e.g.,
10:00 – 10:15 explain how to form the passive voice
10:15 – 10:30 exercises …
4. Lesson filler section. Don’t forget to include this: if your lesson finishes before the bell rings, then you will have to have something to do in those last 10 or so minutes.
5. Tests section. Keep a note of all tests and exams that the class does.
6. A comments section should be left at the bottom of the page: you should complete this section with useful feedback. Was the lesson successful? Did it generate student interest? Was it an efficient plan in that the students seemed to have learnt the work? What wasn’t good about it? Thoughts for the future.
Don’t forget to WRITE OUT YOUR LESSON PLANS LEGIBLY because if you are ill, a substitute teacher will have to use your plan to teach the class. Make your lesson plan interesting: your lesson plan should permit you to have variety. Plan your lesson so that huge chunks are not given over to the same activity, for example: 10 minutes discussion of grammar followed by 10 minutes of exercises followed by 10 – 15 minutes of corrections and explanations followed by…
Most important of all, make sure that each of your lesson plans result in a well defined learning objective. For instance, if your objective is to teach the formation of the future perfect tense, do not confound your objective by also talking about any other future tense forms.