Unit 4 Lesson Planning

Module 2 Lesson Plans and Self-Development

At the end of this module you will:-

a) understand the importance of adequate planning over a series of

lessons

b) understand the importance of planning stages and activities

within a lesson

c) be aware of teacher and student roles at each stage

d) be able to write a detailed lesson plan

e) have considered ways to become a reflective teacher in your future

career
This is the final module of the course and you will be asked to submit a lesson
plan for a full lesson - it will be time to show what you have learnt. If you have
been doing the course slowly, you may find it useful to leaf back through earlier
modules to remind yourself of their content and relevance to lesson planning. In
any case, your mind should be making links between all you have learnt as you
work through these final sections.

Your second task in this section is related to teacher development and how
learning continues after you finish the course.

Part 1. Lesson planning

Lesson plans and holidays

Lesson plans and lesson planning worry teachers a lot. Some even have lesson
planning nightmares, where they leave their plan on the bus or it flies out of the
window. But lesson planning is not as scary as it seems.

Think for a moment about going on holiday. When we are about to go on

holiday, here are some questions we ask ourselves:

How long do I have?

Where is my holiday going to be and what do I want to do when I get there?

How am I going to travel around and what do I need to take?

Can you see already how a holiday is like a course of lessons? Then, having
made a plan, when we arrive in the place we have chosen for our holiday we
find:

That something is more interesting than we thought or not as interesting.

That we cannot get somewhere because there is no transport.

That the weather is better or worse than we had expected.
But if we plan well and have a guidebook, we are able to make changes without
panicking or getting confused.

Unit 1 Module
SELF-CHECK 4:2 1

Which parts of a holiday are like which parts of lesson planning?

Look at the lesson planning points below the table and write a lesson planning point next to
the holiday point it resembles.

Holiday Lesson
Something is more interesting than Day to day changes in plans can be
we thought or not as interesting. made depending on students’
interests

We cannot get somewhere because

there is no transport.

How am I going to get around and

what do I need to take?

That the weather is better or worse

. than we had expected so we do
different things.

Where is the holiday going to be and

what do I want to do when I get
there?

How long do I have?

Lesson planning points:

Sometimes you cannot do what you planned to do because of equipment problems.

Timing of the course and each lesson.
Questions about planning language and materials.
Questions about long-term planning of overall aims.
Students can be unpredictable so we have to be able to adapt.

There are different kinds of lesson planning to take into consideration:

Unit 2 Module
Long-term planning (over a term or year)

Find out the aims of your school for this level of student.
Study the book you are using and check that you have the basic materials that
you need.
Consider the aims of the course. Are you supposed to concentrate on
speaking more than reading? Is there a special exam?
Think about timing - how long do you have? (including missed lessons for
holidays, etc.)
Divide your course up into sections in some way and give a period of time to
each one. This often goes with course book chapters. For example:

Units 1 and 2: The future

Units 3 and 4: Past tenses and storytelling
Units 5 and 6: Likes and dislikes
Units 7 and 8: Descriptions

Try to stick to your plan and not race ahead or get behind.

Planning within a section of work

Sections of work are sometimes called schemes of work or units. There are a
number of aims for a unit of work and these may be in your course book, so
read it!
Some teachers just pick up the book and go on from where they left off last
lesson without thinking about the overall plan for the section or what other
materials to include. Here’s why that is not a good idea:

It’s confusing for you and the students. Unless you have a clear concept of what
you want to achieve in a section of work, your students will feel misguided.

It is rare that pages in the book will fit exactly into lessons, and you will often
have unfinished activities or exercises.

The textbooks is not always up to date, and the lessons in it may not have
interesting materials to make links with real life.

Unit 3 Module
 The lessons in the books cannot be personalised as the book authors don't
know the students in your class and their needs.

Students do not understand why they are studying certain things - just ‘it’s in the
book.’

That is why you need to use the textbook material wisely and take from the
textbook only as much as is required to meet the aims of your students and the
course. This is linked with what we discussed in Unit 3 Module 4 about
assessing, adapting, axing and adding.

A spidergram could help you understand what is going on in a unit. Make one
together when your class starts a new topic. Here’s one on sport:

2.Reading and grammar:

1.Speaking: Magazine biographies
Pair presentations on a
famous sports person
or sport
Powerpoint.

3.Writing:
7.Project work: Sports Report on a sport -
Preparing clear info and use of
presentation, wall bullet points
displays

5.Grammar:
6.Listening: Interviews - Commands and
note taking, 4.Vocabulary:
rules.
being a good listener Sports and equipment,
Have to, must.
Present perfect food and health
tense.

Remember also to consult the beginning of your course book. You often find a
double page spread with a clear idea of what is going on in each unit. And there
should be a Teacher’s Book to go with your course to give you more help and
advice.

Unit 4 Module
Day-to-day lesson planning

You also need a plan for each day.

Aims

Before anything else, concentrate on having clear aims for every lesson. Write
them at the top of your lesson notes.
The aims are what your students should learn to do by the end of the lesson.
The best way to think about your aims is ‘by the end of the lesson, my students
will be able to use the present perfect continuous’ or 'by the end of the lesson
my students will have reviewed/practised ways of asking for directions in the
street.' When you write your plan, however, you may shorten that to infinitive
phrases, such as 'to be able to use the present perfect continuous' or 'to review
ways of asking for directions in the street'.
1) Main aim

The main aim of the lesson should be introduced to students at the beginning of
the class.

It can be a language aim, for example:

To introduce the present perfect used with ‘for’ and ‘since’

To revise number recognition to 100

It can be a skills aim, for example:

To improve the skills of skimming and scanning a scientific text

To learn to engage in small talk

Less frequently, it is a study skills aim, for example:

To investigate what kinds of dictionaries exist and how to use them quickly and
efficiently

A longer lesson can have more than one main aim.

Unit 5 Module
 2) Subsidiary aims

Along with the main aim, there can be secondary or 'subsidiary' aims. These
can also have to do with language, skills and study skills:

To improve speed reading of short texts

(skills)

To get used to answering multiple-choice test questions

(study skills)

To revise countable and uncountable nouns

(language)

3) Personal aims

There can be personal aims for individual students or groups of students;

these are NOT shared with the class.

To give Aisha more chance to answer questions

To fix Igor's pronunciation of /w/ and /v/ by encouraging him to pay attention to the way
he pronounces the sounds

There can also be personal development aims for the teacher:

To use more visuals to ensure that students pay better attention than in the previous
lesson

To improve timing and give homework clearly

Thus, there are a number of aims for any lesson, but it's essential that you begin
by thinking about the main aim. To define it, ask yourself: What is this lesson
for? What exactly am I going to teach? Why will my students benefit from the
lesson? What am I trying to achieve?

Remember, if something unexpected comes up, you may have to change your
aims. A lesson plan is not set in stone, it should be flexible.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 2

Unit 6 Module
Have a look at these aims for lessons and sort them into the right columns.
The first one has been done for you.
Language Skills Study skills Personal Personal development for
for students teacher

A) To introduce times of the day and greetings.

B) To introduce vocabulary notebooks and how to use them.

C) Extensive reading of document for gist.

D) To work individually with Group 3 on handwriting problems.

E) To test new seating arrangement for group work.

F) To work on giving clearer instructions with gestures.

G) To listen for the speaker's mood.

H) To revise expressions of intention using want to and going to.

I) To introduce web research for language study.

J) To see whether boy/girl pairwork in role plays is better than work in mixed-gender pairs.

K) To encourage Julia to participate from the beginning of the lesson, not from the middle as
usual.

COMMENT

Unit 7 Module
A and H are language aims
C and G are skills aims
B and I are study skills aims
D and K are personal aims for students
E, F and J are personal development aims for the teacher

They are all valid lesson aims.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 3
Here are three teachers talking about what they are going to do in their lessons today.
For each one, decide why they are doing this. What are the teacher’s aims?
Which of the teachers seem to have clear aims and which don't.

TEACHER 1

I’ve been talking and talking, explaining grammar too much in lessons recently. Today we are
starting a new unit on Health and Fitness, so I have asked them to bring in information about
what they ate for dinner last night. I’ve got some food flashcards ready that we're going to go
through, and we’re going to look at the reading in the book about healthy eating and work in
groups for a large part of the lesson. I’ll also introduce information at the end about a poster
project I want them to do.

TEACHER 2

I’m tired today so I’m going to get them to draw some pictures of animals and copy some
information about them from this website I found. That should take them an hour but if they
finish early I’ll get them to learn any vocabulary they have forgotten.

TEACHER 3

I’ve got up to page 47 and we finished the past tense last lesson so I’m going to teach the
present perfect tense today by doing exercises 3, 4 and 5. Then we can copy the timeline in
our books and do the pairwork on page 48. For writing practice they can do exercise 6.

COMMENT

Unit 8 Module
TEACHER 1

This teacher has been thinking about class dynamics and development and
wants a change. She aims to encourage interaction/discussion before and
during the reading and is planning a longer project so that they can work
together on some writing. The plan looks practical and personal. The vocabulary
aims have been set, the teacher has prepared a range of vocabulary cards, and
the words will be presented in context. The only thing that is not so clear is
whether there are any skills aims and which reading sub-skills will be developed.
(To say 'look at the reading' is not to say much in terms of what is to be actually
done by students).

TEACHER 2

Let’s hope there are not too many lessons like this! This is a time-filling lesson
which does not have a clear aim or teach anything. The writing is only copying
and the drawing is not related to English. The teacher has not planned to focus
on study skills for the vocabulary learning, so probably the students will just sit
and try to learn the words off by heart, which could be difficult. There is no
introduction or ending planned.

TEACHER 3

This teacher is practical and organised but relies on the book too much. There is
a clear language aim relating to grammar, and some skills work but the teacher
is not thinking about much else. This plan lists things to be done but it's not clear
WHY they are to be done. The teacher said three sentences and after each of
them we could ask her ‘WHY?’'. 'To teach a tense by doing exercises' is a rather
odd definition, too. There is more to teaching a language point than doing three
exercises.

Stages of a lesson

The main purpose of your lesson is to teach 'something' to your learners, and it
is important to decide on appropriate methods, materials and activities to ensure
the lesson works. To help organise our time and the process of teaching, we
need to think about a lesson as consisting of several separate stages.

The sequence of stages to be explained below is called Presentation-Practice-

Production (PPP). We already mentioned it a few times in previous modules. It
works best in a lesson where a new language point is being introduced, for

Unit 9 Module
instance a grammatical structure, a set of vocabulary or a language function,
such as how to ask for/give directions or to apologise.
For lessons whose main aim is to teach a skill, the sequences may be different.
For instance, note the stages of a writing lesson in Unit 3 Module 3.

A typical PPP lesson will consist of the following stages:

1) Introduction

2) Presentation

3) Practice

4) Production

5) Plenary and warm down

1) Introduction

This may consist of a warmer, revision and a lead-in.

Warmer:
It is not a good idea to begin your lesson by taking attendance, saying 'today we
are going to learn...' and then immediately plunging into an explanation of the
language point of the lesson.

It is important to set the mood for the lesson and put the students' minds in the
'English zone'. Ask them what has happened to them since the last class. Ask
them how they feel about the unusual weather outside or about the local football
team's historic victory yesterday. Get them talking to you and each other in an
informal way. Make sure as many students as possible get involved.

Revision:
You may then revise what was learnt in the previous lesson or lessons. It can be
a quick exercise or a game based on the language or skills learnt recently.
Checking homework may also be part of this revision sub-stage.

The warmer and revision should not take too long. They prepare your students
to begin working on the main point of the lesson. Getting carried away at this
stage will mean you may not have enough time left to meet the main lesson
aims.

Unit 10 Module
Lead-in:
Now from these introductory activities, you will segue into the main point of the
lesson.
The lead-in is to do with 'setting the scene' for your presentation of the language
point. This can be done by encouraging the class to discuss a particular topic or
language function, by brainstorming ideas onto the whiteboard, or by revising
material from previous lessons which will be useful for the lesson now. One
possible aim of this stage is to establish how much the students already know
about the language point.

For example, if you are to teach vocabulary of household appliances, then at the
lead-in stage you can revise the names of rooms in a house/flat, discuss with
students what kinds of jobs they do around the house and then ask if they can
name any of the appliances in your picture cards.

Alternatively, you can set the scene by introducing a fictional character, eliciting
his/her name, age, etc, and getting students to describe the house he/she lives
in. You can also introduce his/her family members. Then take out pictures of the
household appliances that the character and each of his/her family members
supposedly uses and move on to the presentation stage, where you will present
the words.

Some techniques we can use at this lead-in step include:

Open questions, reading a paragraph, the use of picture stimuli, spidergrams,
including input from the students to find out what they know, the use of key
words on the board and so on. This gets students thinking along the right lines
and focuses their attention, so that they are ready for new material to be
presented.

A good idea is to give students a pre-study homework task. Eg in the previous

lesson you may have asked them to go home and think about the things people
do around the house and what they are called in English. The benefits of this
are many, but the advantage is most clearly seen when there is a big gap
between lessons - for example if students come only once a week. Tasks and
preparation mean they keep thinking about English from one week to the next.

2) Presentation

At this stage, you need to make sure that you clearly present language that you
want the students to focus on. This will be the new language point that they

Unit 11 Module
need to have explained to them with your help and guidance, also called the
target language of your lesson. Teaching that target language is the lesson's
main aim.

Your having set the scene at the lead-in stage will ensure that the target
language is presented in context, such as a short written text, a story told by
the teacher, or a dialogue, so that students can see/hear the new language and
understand its meaning and use. This provides a model for learners to copy and
then use to produce their own language.

The target language can then be presented with clear explanations and
examples showing what it means and how it is used. As you explain, do keep
the students actively involved. Do NOT lecture them but try to elicit as much as
they already know about the target language, gently guide them towards a more
correct understanding if they are mistaken; let them assist you in your
presentation.

Thus, your presentation must be teacher-led but with active involvement of

the students.

Make sure that you have presented the meaning, form and pronunciation of
the target language. For example, in the presentation stage of a lesson on the
past perfect tense you should establish that your students

− understand that the tense refers to something finished before another

event or point of time in the past (meaning)
− know that the tense consists of the auxiliary verb 'had' and the past
participle of the main verb (form)
− know how to pronounce the structure in a natural way, ie omitting the 'h' I
'had' - /ˌhiː (ə)d ˈdʌn ɪt/ for 'he had done it' (pronunciation)

How do you help them learn the above?

Presenting the target language in context helps students understand

the meaning. Use concept check questions to establish that they
understand correctly. Eg for the sentence 'When I arrived, Amy had left'
ask the students: 'Did Amy leave before or after the speaker arrived?'

Writing the structure in a clear way on the board helps them

understand the form. Point out the parts it consists of (the exact terms you
will use depend on the extent to which your students are familiar with the
terminology; try to elicit these from them first):

Unit 12 Module
 + Amy had left.

subject auxiliary 'had' past participle

? Had Amy left?

auxiliary 'had' subject past participle

Modelling and drilling helps students master pronunciation. Demonstrate

the correct way to pronounce the target language, then have students
repeat after you, chorally and individually. You may need to do more
drilling at the next stage (controlled practice stage), because pronunciation
may take time to get right.

If you use a text to introduce language, present it to your students for

comprehension and discussion (lead-in) and then ask them to focus on certain
aspects of the language – eg ‘relationship between the past simple and the past
perfect’ or ‘how to express comparison’ (presentation). This way, the lead-in
may take a little longer and the presentation may come later in the lesson, but it
is still there and should still be a teacher-led section of the lesson.

You can use group and pair work ‘discovery’ techniques (also known as
inductive learning; something we discussed in Unit 2 Module 1) - where you give
students a context, focus their attention on the target language (in a text for
example) and they work out the rules. After they have tried, you can ‘clarify’ the
rules for them, and this will be your presentation stage.

3) Practice (Controlled practice)

Practice consolidates the knowledge learners have hopefully gained from the
presentation stage of the lesson, preparing them to use the language
meaningfully and with confidence. The teacher's role here is to manage a range
of activities which allow learners to try out the new language through whole-
class activities, pairwork and groupwork.

At this controlled stage, there is a strong focus on the target language and a
high degree of control over students' output. The aim of the stage is to achieve
the accuracy of using the target language, and at this point accuracy takes
precedence over fluency.

Unit 13 Module
Even though the target language is not yet used in realistic communication, a
good controlled practice activity must be contextualised.

For example, if you are teaching comparatives, the following practice is NOT
contextualised and is likely to be boring.

Complete the sentences using the right comparative form of the adjective in
brackets.
He is (tall) than his sister
I _ (old) than my brother.
and so on.

However, if these sentences are incorporated into a short story about, say, the
Anderson family, context will be provided and the activity will be more
meaningful.

Or you can give students pictures of two movie stars to compare and a list of
adjectives to use in their sentences. Make sure that they have the comparative
form chart in front of them at this early practice stage as a reminder.

Controlled practice can take the form of guided dialogues or role plays,
information-gap activities or games such as Charades to guess vocabulary. The
practice can involve listening, reading or writing skills, with texts and recordings
introduced which include the target language which can then be practised in a
range of activity types: true/false comprehension questions, completion
exercises, summarising, etc. Short written pieces based on a certain pattern can
be done and monitored carefully by the teacher.

Aim to use a range of practice activities. This will help prevent lessons becoming
predictable and will also build in the element of repetition but in an interesting
way. The teacher initiates, manages and encourages at this stage, intervening
whenever necessary and checking for errors. These can be focussed on later in
the lesson.

4) Production (Free practice)

As the lesson moves away from teacher guidance to semi-free or free language
practice by the student, we think of it in terms of language production. This
production activity may take the form of a group solution to a problem – oral or
written, a story or description using a particular language item, a loosely guided
or unguided role-play using the language item, a discussion or letter-writing.

Unit 14 Module
For example, if you are teaching the function of apologising and forgiving, set
the roles (or let the students decide what the roles will be), such as mother and
daughter, then let them brainstorm what may have gone wrong between the
mother and the daughter so apologies are due. Once the scenarios have been
developed, have them practise dialogues in pairs in which the daughter
apologises, explains the reasons for doing something wrong, and the mother
forgives her (or maybe vice versa, it's mother who has to apologise).

The final output by the students should meet the aims of the lesson with the
teacher monitoring for errors but being much more an observer than anything
else at this stage. Here, the students should be producing the target language
with minimal, if any, teacher interference. It's best to take note of errors and to
correct later, after the activity has been completed (whereas in controlled
practice you would be more likely to intervene early).

Always remember that you will not instantly have perfect production of language
by your students. A new language item needs a bit of thinking about and several
weeks of ‘revisiting’ by the students before they are secure. What’s more they
will progress at different rates. Perfect production does not magically occur in
every student at the same time! Your job is to make sure that they have a
chance to experiment and learn through making mistakes. If you only ever do
controlled practice, students will not see the meaning of learning the language
items they are taught or how they can be used in real life. They also need the
chance to use what they have learnt before alongside what they are learning
now.

Practice and production should be seen as leading from one to the other. It is no
use springing a production task on students that you have not prepared them for
through controlled practice.

5) Plenary and warm-down

Plenary
'Plenary' refers to a whole-class review of what has been learnt in the lesson.

It is extremely important that you end your class with a re-focussing on what
they have been doing.
You may begin this stage by giving feedback and encouraging students to give
feedback to their partners on the production activity. Focus on the mistakes you
noticed while monitoring.

Unit 15 Module
Then summarise the lesson. Some teachers do this very formally by talking with
the class about ‘what we have been learning today’ or referring back to lesson
aims written on the white board. The students can see how the lesson has
progressed and how the activities are all linked.

Some teachers have a short question and answer session in which the students
give their opinion on what they think they have learnt.

In other lessons the whole-class review may be longer. For example, if your
students have been writing letters in pairs or doing a discussion task in groups
then you may wish them to present what they have done to the class. If there
isn't enough time to listen to everybody, ask if there are any volunteers or
choose the group that you think have been the most successful with the task.

You can also tie in the lesson with previous or later lessons. It is now time to set
homework and talk about the next session. Write the homework on the board
and repeat it orally. Make sure students understand what to do. Maybe an even
better idea, though, is to set homework right at the beginning of the plenary
stage. This is done in case the lesson finishes during the review stage. Students
may turn off once they know the lesson is over and they won't pay due attention
to the homework assignment.

Warm-down
If there is some time left after the plenary, a short activity such as a song or a
game may be an appropriate way to end the lesson. This will not necessarily
have to do with what has been learnt in this class. It may be a fun ritual that you
and your students have created and that they like (eg make a prediction for the
coming weekend), or a song that you sang together a long time ago and your
students enjoyed, or a quick game that you know they love.
This will allow you to end the lesson on a relaxed and pleasant note, and your
students will go home in a happy mood.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 4

1. Now that you are familiar with the stages of a PPP lesson, can you see how the role of the
teacher changes through the lesson? At which stage is the teacher involved the most in what
goes on in the lesson? At which stage is the teacher involved the least?

2. Match the parts of the lesson described to the five stages in the box:

Introduction

Unit 16 Module
 Presentation
Practice
Production
Plenary

"I asked the class about the weather today, and wrote the vocabulary which they used
correctly on the board. I added more vocabulary and used pictures to make sure
everyone understood what each word meant. I drilled the words in sentences about the
weather in different cities and asked concept check questions. Next, I gave out
worksheets with pictures of the weather and days of the week, and as I played a
listening of this week's weather forecast, students listened and matched the picture to
the correct day. Then the answers were checked in a whole-class session. This was
followed by pairwork, with an information gap activity in which students completed a
weather map of Britain. The final activity was a written description of the weather in each
season in their own country. Some of them read out what they had written to the class.
For homework I gave them a research task on the climate in a range of different cities
around the world so that we can prepare a class display next lesson.”

Can you write ‘aims’ for this lesson?

COMMENT

1. The teacher involvement generally decreases towards the end of a PPP

lesson. It is substantial at the introduction stage, then it's the heaviest at
the presentation stage, it decreases at the controlled practice stage and
there is the least involvement at the production stage. The teacher gets
back students' attention for the plenary but it's important that the plenary
remains student-centred.

2. I asked the class about the weather today, and wrote the vocabulary
which they used correctly on the board. - this is Introduction.

I added more vocabulary and used pictures to make sure everyone understood
what each word meant. I drilled the words in sentences about the weather in
different cities and asked concept check questions. - this is Presentation.

Next, I gave out worksheets with pictures of the weather and days of the week,
and as I played a listening of this week's weather forecast, students listened and
matched the picture to the correct day. Then the answers were checked in a
whole-class session. - this is Controlled Practice

Unit 17 Module
This was followed by pairwork, with an information gap activity in which students
completed a weather map of Britain. - this could be Controlled Practice or
Production depending on how much support was given to students for target
language use. One classification talks about Freer practice as opposed to Free
practice. According to that, this stage would be Freer practice followed by Free
practice (the next activity).

The final activity was a written description of the weather in each season in their
own country. - this is Production.

Some of them read out what they had written to the class. For homework I gave
them a research task on the climate in a range of different cities around the
world so that we can prepare a class display next lesson. - this is Plenary.

The main aim of the lesson was to teach weather vocabulary and help students
to use it in descriptions of weather. You may have identified various secondary
aims, and you can only guess about personal aims.

Time management

There is no exact instruction how much time each stage of the PPP lesson
should take. What is important is that the stages are well-balanced. For
example, in a 45 minute lesson, having a 20 minute introduction, 15 minute
presentation, followed by 4 minute practice and 4 minute production, and finally
a 2 minute plenary does not demonstrate a well-balanced lesson. If you set
aside just 3 minutes for presentation leaving plenty of time for practice and
production, your students may simply not be ready to practise or produce the
target language, so you'll find yourself having to go back to square one.

In general, the introduction should be brief, the presentation longer, then the
practice and production should take up the largest part of the lesson. However,
if the language point is difficult, you may spend longer on presentation, whereas
production may be left for homework.

To give you an idea how to best approach time management in the classroom,
let's look at some common mistakes that teachers make at the planning stage
and problems they encounter due to poor planning.

Teachers plan for 50 minutes of work in a 50 minute lesson.

A 50 minute lesson is not 50 minutes long, as the students have to get in and
get organised, then pack up and get out of the room. More like 45 minutes,

Unit 18 Module
sometimes only 40. You can still plan for 50 minutes but add a couple of extra
minutes to each activity to allow for the set-up and delays.

Teachers plan a 1-minute brainstorm activity.

Never write things into your plan that take one minute. They always take longer!
Have you thought about the time taken to draw the spidergram or write down
student suggestions? Or just to explain what they have to do?

Group work goes on a lot longer than planned.

Teachers don’t plan the time it takes to move the furniture and give instructions.
You often see ‘work in groups for 10 minutes’ on teachers’ plans, but 5 minutes
of that may be getting organised!

Students are not handing in their homework - they say they didn’t write it
down.
This is often the fault of the teacher who makes a lesson plan that does
not allow time for discussing homework. As we've mentioned before, it
does not have to be at the end of the lesson, but could be half way through or
even at the beginning. It is also a sign that there is probably not a clear plenary
stage at the end of the lesson.

The teacher finishes early and doesn't know what to do in the remaining
time.
You should have an ‘if time’ activity to do if you finish too quickly.

The teacher runs out of time.

Have a cut-off point in the last activity in the lesson that is clear and organised -
not just ‘finish that off for homework then’.

The key to successful time management in the classroom is what we call

‘flexible planning’. That means you plan what is going to happen in a lesson
but you are ready to change your mind if something does not go quite as you
had planned. If we plan very rigidly then the students do not have a chance to
go over something if they do not understand or move on quickly if they
understand very fast. On the other hand, if we are always distracted by trivia,
then the students will get frustrated as the aims of the lesson may not be
fulfilled.

So even as you put specific timings in your lesson plan, it is very rare that you
will be able to faithfully stick to them for the entire lesson. In fact, trying to do so
at any cost and ignoring reality is a recipe for failure.

Unit 19 Module
SELF-CHECK 4:2 5

You will see a lesson plan for a 1-hour lesson. It describes the main activities and is not
detailed. (NB: When you submit your own plan in task one, it should be more detailed than
this! Examples of detailed plans are on pages 24-30). The reason this plan is so sketchy is
that the focus in this self-check is on timing.

Can you spot any errors concerning timing in this plan?

Warm up (whole-class) Ask what they've done since last class. 3 minutes

Revision (whole-class) Revise first conditional. 5 minutes

Lead-in (pairs, then whole Elicit meanings of 'dream'. Students discuss in 15 minutes
class) pairs what they dream about. Plenary.

Presentation (whole-class) Use some of students' dreams to present 5 minutes

structure 'I wish + past simple'. Introduce
fictional character and what she wishes about:
turn into 'I wish' sentences, drill, write on
board.

Practice (pairs) Do exercises from textbook. 3 minutes

Practice (mingling) Mill drill. Write your dreams and go around the 10 minutes
class to find out who has the same dreams
using 'Do you wish you were...' etc.
Production (small groups) In group of three discuss what some famous 20 minutes
people might wish they did/had/etc. (Give them
list of names to choose from).
Plenary (whole-class) Let groups share their ideas. Feedback on 1 minute
correctness. Homework.

COMMENT

1. If you add up the timing of all the lesson stages, you'll get 1 hour and
2 minutes. The lesson's duration is just 1 hour.
2. The introduction takes 23 minutes – almost half the lesson time. That's too
long and you need enough time to present the language point. While the
warm-up and revision are of reasonable length, the lead-in is too long for
its purpose.
3. The presentation could, in theory, be done in 5 minutes, but you would
then have to rush and students might fall behind. You need to present the

Unit 20 Module
 target language very clearly and at a normal pace, checking from time to
time that everyone in the class follows you and has the chance to ask
questions.
4. 3 minutes is unrealistic for the first practice activity. 'Exercises' means
there are more than one, and even if they are tiny 2-sentence exercises,
students would need time to find them in their books, understand the
instructions, write their answers, and then the answers need to be
checked together – this will definitely take much more than 3 minutes.
5. 20 minutes is probably too long for the production. The teacher's aim
at this stage may be to give students extensive free practice of the
target
language by producing many different things the famous people might
wish for, however it's likely to get repetitive, and students' imagination is
likely to run dry soon enough.
6. 1 minute for the plenary is almost nothing – only setting homework is
bound to take longer than that (though because the production is likely to
finish early, there'll hopefully be enough time for the plenary in the actual
lesson).

Additionally, it is not clear whether the previous homework is checked in the

lesson.

Planning for group and pair work

When planning a lesson you should look at what the students and the teacher
will be doing at each stage. This is important so that you prepare a variety of
focus. That means the students are not facing the teacher or listening to the
teacher all the time. We have discussed this in many different sections of the
course and it is fundamental to good lesson preparation and planning.

Pairwork

By using pairwork, students are encouraged with little, if any, teacher

interference and have the chance to co-operate with other learners for the
completion of a given task. It is important that learners should be able to cope
with the practice tasks set (which must be linked to the language focus and
presentation for the lesson). The materials must be of a suitable level and the
content must be motivating. Don’t take ages setting up pairwork for the students
to say: ‘Is it a tomato? No it isn’t, it is a pear.’ and so on. Give them something
interesting to do. It is also important to think about who to pair up. Work ‘mixed
ability’ into your pairwork with ‘if time’ activities and ‘cut off points’ as discussed
above. Pairwork can be done easily and quickly without moving the furniture

Unit 21 Module
about if you have set your classroom up in a communicative way - remember
you can even do it if the furniture is immovable!

Group work

Group work lends itself to a range of activities. Learners have the opportunity to
communicate with others in the target language, and group work can encourage
strong and weak learners to participate in discussions, debates and problem-
solving activities. Flexible groupings can be extremely motivating for students.
They start off in a set group, then split and re-form. For example, 3 groups of A,
B and C are each given a part of a story to prepare orally (A – the introduction,
B - the development, C - the ending). They then make 3 new groups, with A, B,
and C students in each, to put together a completed narrative. This encourages
every student to participate, to learn from others in the group, to listen and to
give feedback, leading to confidence, improved fluency and support for reading
and writing tasks. Group projects are motivating, especially if there is a plenary
at the end or if work is to be displayed on the wall.

Group work needs a clear task, and it should not be over in two minutes when
you have spent five minutes setting up and moving the furniture! And remember,
as we discussed in Unit 4 Module 1, not all groups have to do the same thing.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 6

Here are some disadvantages in using pair work or group work activities in the ESOL
classroom. Fill in the column with suggestions of how to cope. Try to use these key words in
your answers.

KEY WORDS: group roles, clear tasks, circulate, feedback, extension

Disadvantage How to cope

The noise level may be quite high. Make sure students are seated close enough
together so that they do not have to shout and
far enough from the other groups so they are
not distracted.

Students may start using their mother tongue

in a monolingual class.

The teacher cannot listen to all of the

students at the same time.

Unit 22 Module
Some students may do no work at all.

Some groups may finish more quickly than

others.

Pairs may not like each other.

It may not be possible to arrange furniture in

the right way.

Students in a pair may be of different levels

and have difficulty understanding each other.

Planning review

Good planning means:

1. Specifying your aims for the lesson and how you intend to put over your
teaching point(s) in a coherent manner.

2. Being aware of the time you, the teacher, have to deliver your lesson
and to achieve your aims.

3. Using context to teach the target language.

4. Dividing your lesson up into stages.

5. Being aware of what the students will be doing at each stage.

6. Choosing suitable situations and activities to exploit (ie practise) the teaching
point(s).

7. Being aware of which other language items (not your target language) are
likely to be used by the students in these situations.
Teachers may present the same teaching point in different ways. One teacher
may make more use of a textbook than another, who might only include
textbook material as a last resort. Planning inevitably involves rejection of ideas
whatever the source may be as well as acceptance of them.

Unit 23 Module
Lesson planning is not easy. Take it seriously right from the beginning and you
will gradually understand its importance and it will become easier. If you start off
as a lazy planner, you are cheating your students out of the chance to feel
secure and succeed.

Look at the following lesson plans as reference for producing your own. Study
the lesson plans, then complete Task 1.

Sample Lesson Plan 1 (Vocabulary lesson). Group/class teaching

Pre-plan:

Level, age Intermediate, Adults

Lesson duration 1 hour 30 minutes

Main aim To learn cooking verbs and to be able to use them in recipes.
Secondary aims To practise giving and following instructions, sequencing and
talking about favourite dishes.
Target language Add, bake, beat, boil, chop, crush, fry, grate, grill, mix,
measure, mince, peel, pour, roast, sautee, slice, stir.
Assumptions Recognition of imperative form for instructions
Food vocabulary
Language of sequencing [first, then, next ....]
Expected Use of 'you must' rather than imperative form Confusion
problems of articles [take a carrot , peel the carrot] Students may
not know what to name all the ingredients.
Solutions Demonstration and drilling of the imperative form of cooking
verbs.
Quick revision of articles.
Encourage students to look up the names of unfamiliar
ingredients in a dictionary.

Lesson sequence:
Introduction Bring a carrot or potato into the lesson. Ask students to suggest
(5 minutes) how you could eat it, what you could make from it.

Unit 24 Module
 Then ask students about their favourite meat or vegetable.
Presentation Put details on the board in 3 columns.
(15 min)
Vegetables/meat How to prepare How to cook

potatoes peel fry

slice bake

Tell the class that your favourite meal is Shepherd's Pie or

another dish that you know how to prepare. Explain
the process, putting the stages on the board
using flashcards to help explain vocabulary [ie chop] or
realia, and using sequences [first, next …] Elicit as much as you
can from the students. Limit to a maximum of 10 stages. Check
that the group have understood and can reproduce the
instructions orally.
Practice 1 Hand out worksheets with pictures of various actions used
Pair work when cooking [ie fry, mix, add]. Students match the verbs
(10 mins) given to the pictures. They then complete a short passage
below, putting the correct verb into the correct space to
complete the recipe. Teacher monitors.

"Take two large potatoes. First ......... the potatoes, then

........ them thinly and ........ gently in hot oil."
Practice 2 Students listen to someone giving instructions on making
Individual work a Victoria Sandwich. The steps are given on a worksheet
(10 mins) but in the wrong order. Students listen and put stages into
the correct order. Students check in pairs. Teacher
monitors.
Production Students in groups prepare the recipe for a simple dish,
Group work possibly from one of their own countries. They discuss,
(30 mins) then write down, the ingredients, and the steps involved,
but also make a copy with details in the wrong order.
These are then collected and handed out to different
groups, who must rearrange the instructions into the
correct order and produce their own version, finally
comparing it with the correct original.

Teacher sets up the groups and possibly appoints

group leaders. Teacher then monitors, noting errors
for future revision work and helping with unknown vocabulary.
Plenary Some ingredients/recipes read out to the class. Question-and-

Unit 25 Module
(15 mins) answer on foods and ingredients. Revision of aims and key terms
plus mistakes/strong points from group work.
Homework Students write down the recipe for a typical or favourite
(5 mins) dish from their own country and bring it to the next lesson for wall
display or for a small leaflet of recipes (with samples of course, if
possible!)

Sample Lesson Plan 2 (Functional Lesson). Teaching One-to-One

Pre-plan

Level, age Elementary, 15-years old

Lesson 1 hour 30 minutes (with a 5-minute break in the middle)
duration
Aim To learn how to ask someone about their attitude to
something and how to express your own attitude
Target Do you like...?
language How do you feel about...?
What's your attitude to...? (optional, if the student has
learnt the previous two phrases well)
I love, I (really) like, I don't mind, I don't care about, I
don't like/dislike, I hate, I can't stand + object
How about you?
Assumptions Student knows the word order in present simple
sentences and questions. They probably know the basic
verbs of attitude such as 'like'. The last lesson was on
hobbies and free-time activities. They have previously
studied fruit and vegetables.
Expected Student may fail to grasp the more subtle differences
problems between the verbs of attitude.
At the freer practice stage the student may lack ideas for
what to ask about.
The production task may require a range of vocabulary in

Unit 26 Module
 addition to the target language and assumed knowledge
Solutions Apart from the visuals on the board showing different
degrees of liking/disliking, reinforce meaning with
gestures and body language.
Make it fun, show that it can be about any object you see.
Encourage the student to say a word in their language
and you will translate (if you know their language), or
encourage them to use a dictionary.
Learning style Visual

Lesson sequence
Introduction. General chat about everyday matters. (This helps to build
Warm-up social skills and the vocabulary used when making small
(5 mins) talk. Since the lessons are only once a week, the student
needs ‘warming up').
Introduction. Produce pictures of free-time activities from the
Revision and previous lesson, such as walking, playing computer
Lead-in games, watching TV, jogging, etc. Elicit the vocabulary.
(5 mins) Then ask the student 'Do you like + activity?' about each
activity. See how much of the target language he knows
already. Encourage the student to ask you the same
question and tell him how you feel about a few activities
using the target language using simpler verbs at this stage.
Presentation Tell the student how you feel about several activities, using
(15 mins) all the target verbs ranging from love to can't stand (ie you
love the first activity, like the next, don't mind the next, etc.)
Draw the continuum on the board with funny pictures to
convey meaning (eg big heart for 'love', skull and crossbones
for 'can't stand'). Drill the words as they are presented. Drill
the question 'How do you feel about...?' and have the
student ask you about a set of activities. Quickly answer with
body language reinforcement. Then ask the student how he
feels and prompt him to use the target language. Drill some
more.

Unit 27 Module
Controlled Give the student a short text where a fictional character
Practice called Ned (whose picture is provided) talks about how he
(10 mins) feels about different fruit and vegetables. There are gaps in
sentences where the target language should be. Pictures of
bananas, potatoes, plums, etc along with the symbols
previously used on the board are provided as clues for what
to put in the gaps. The student is encouraged not to look at
the board and try to get the words from memory. Then he
looks at the board to check the word choice and spelling.
The text is read out with focus on pronunciation.
Whilst student is doing the task, put the kettle on and make a
drink.
Break Tea/coffee and a chat. This can be about anything but you
(5 min) can also ask how he feels about tea and coffee (for instance
he chose tea because he dislikes coffee), how often he
drinks tea, coffee (if at all). What about milk, juice, etc? Since
this is informal, don't focus on accuracy during this time.
Controlled Have pictures of some Hollywood stars ready on your
Practice computer screen. How many of them can your student
(15 mins) name? Listen to a recording where a girl talks about her
attitude to those actors/actresses. Have the student make
notes while he listens. See how much he understood. (She
really likes Martin Freeman, she doesn't care about Meg
Ryan, etc). Listen again and try to catch the reasons why
she likes/dislikes some of the stars. Play sections of
recording again to check if there are incorrect answers.
Freer practice Drill 'how about you?' Model the dialogue:
(10 mins)
'How do you feel about...?'
'I (like/hate, etc)… How about you?'
'I...'

Act out this dialogue with the student asking about the first
thing that crosses your mind (could be anything you see in
the classroom). Take turns being the one to begin.

Production Give the student time to prepare a short presentation: 'How I

(15 mins) feel about living in...(wherever he lives).' Tell him to try to
use all the target language and comment on what exactly he

Unit 28 Module
 likes/dislikes about living there.
Plenary and Listen to the student's presentation and give feedback
warm-down afterwards. Encourage the student to correct his mistakes if
(15 mins) any. Discuss what he has learnt today. Set homework: write
about your family member or pet – what he/she likes,
dislikes, etc. If time remains play Charades.

Now before you complete the Tutor-assessed task, read the following extract
about lesson planning:

Unit 29 Module
 LESSON PLANNING

Lesson planning is the art of combining a number of different elements into a coherent whole so
that a lesson has an identity which students can recognise, work within, and react to -whatever metaphor
teachers may use to visualise and create that identity. But plans -which help teachers identify aims
and anticipate potential problems -are proposals for action rather than scripts to be followed slavishly,
whether they are detailed documents or hastily scribbled notes.

Pre-planning

Before we start to make a lesson plan we need to consider a number of crucial factors such as the language
level of our students, their educational and cultural background, their likely levels of motivation, and their
different learning styles. Such knowledge is, of course, more easily available when we have spent time with
a group than it is at the beginning of a course. When we are not yet familiar with the character of a group, we
need to do our best to gain as much understanding of them as we can before starting to make decisions
about what to teach.

We also need knowledge of the content and organisation of the syllabus or curriculum we are working with,
and the requirements of any exams which the students are working towards.

Armed now with our knowledge of the students and of the syllabus we can go on to consider the four main
planning elements:

i. Activities
When planning, it is vital to consider what students will be doing in the classroom; we have to
consider the way they will be grouped, whether they are to move around the class, whether they will
work quietly side-by-side researching on the Internet or whether they will be involved in a boisterous
group-writing activity.

We should make decisions about activities almost independently of what language or skills we have
to teach. Our first planning thought should centre round what kind of activity would be best for a
particular group of students at a particular point in a lesson, or on a particular date. By deciding what
kind of activity to offer them -in the most general sense -we have a chance to balance the exercises
in our lessons in order to offer the best possible chance of engaging and motivating the class.

The best lessons offer a variety of activities within a class period. Students may find themselves
standing up and working with each other for five minutes before returning to their seats and working
for a time on their own. The same lesson may end with a whole-class discussion or with pairs writing
dialogues to practise a language function or grammar point.

ii. Skills
We need to make a decision about which language skills we wish our students to develop. This
choice is sometimes determined by the syllabus or the course book. However, we still need to plan
exactly how students are going to work with the skill and what sub-skills we wish to practise.
Planning decisions about language skills and sub-skills are co-dependent with the content of the
lesson and with the activities which the teachers will get students to take part in.

iii. Language
We need to decide what language to introduce and have the students learn, practise, research or
use. One of the dangers of planning is that, where language is the main focus, it is the first and only
planning decision that teachers make. Once the decision has been taken to teach the present
continuous, for example, it is sometimes tempting to slip back into a drill-dominated teaching session
which lacks variety and which may not be the best way to achieve our aims. But language is only
one area that we need to consider when planning lessons.

iv. Content
Lesson planners have to select content which has a good chance of provoking interest and
involvement. Since they know their students personally they are well-placed to select appropriate

Unit 30 Module
 content. Even where the choice of subject and content is to some extent dependent on a course
book, we can still judge when and if to use the course book's topics, or whether to replace them with
something else. We can predict, with some accuracy, which topics will work and which will not.
However, the most interesting content can be made bland if the activities and tasks that go with it
are unimaginative. Similarly, subjects that are not especially fascinating can be used extremely
successfully if the good planner takes time to think about how students can best work with them.

When thinking about the elements we have discussed above we carry with us not only the knowledge of the
students, but also our belief in the need to create an appropriate balance between variety and coherence.
With all of these features in mind we can finally pass all our thinking through the filter of practical reality,
where our knowledge of the classrooms we work in, the equipment we can use, the time we have available,
and the attitude of the institution we work in all combine to focus our planning on what we are actually going
to do. Now, as the figure below shows, we are in a position to move from pre-planning to the plan itself.

Pre-Planning and the Plan

Teacher’s knowledge of the students

Teacher’s knowledge of the syllabus

Language skills Language type Subject and

Activities
conte

Practical Realities

The Plan

The Plan
Having done some pre-planning and made decisions about the kind of lesson we want to teach, we
can make the lesson plan. This may take a number of different forms, depending upon the circumstances of
the lesson and depending also, on our attitude to planning in general.

The planning continuum

The way that teachers plan lessons depends upon the circumstances in which the lesson is to take place and
on the teacher's experience. Near one end of a 'planning continuum', teachers may do all the (vague)
pre-planning in their head and make actual decisions about what to include in the lesson as they hurry along
the corridor to the class. Those with experience can get away with this some of the time because they have a
number of familiar routines to fall back on.

Another scenario near the same end of the continuum occurs when teachers are following a course book and
they do exactly what the book says, letting the course book writers, in effect, do their planning for them. This
is especially attractive for teachers under extreme time pressure, though if we do not spend time
thinking about how to use the course book activities (and what happens when we do) we may run
into difficulties later. Effective coursebook use is more complex than this.
At the very end of the planning continuum is the kind of lesson described by one writer as the 'jungle path',
where teachers walk into class with no real idea of what they are going to do (Scrivener 1994b: 34-37); thus
they might say 'What did you do last weekend?' and base the class on what replies they get. They might ask
the students what they want to do that day, or take in an activity to start the class with no real idea of where it

Unit 31 Module
will lead them and their students. Such an approach is favoured by Mario Rinvolucri, who has suggested that
instead of working to a pre-arranged plan, a teacher should be more like a doctor, basing treatment upon
accurate diagnosis. All classes and students are different, he argued, so to decide beforehand what they
should learn on a given day (especially when this is done some days before) is to confine them to a mental
structure and ignore the 'flesh-and-blood here-and-now learners' (Rinvolucri 1996).

Experienced teachers may well be able to run effective lessons in this way, without making a plan at all.
When such lessons are successful they can be immensely rewarding for all concerned. But more often they
run the risk of being muddled and aimless. There is a real danger that if teachers do not have a clear idea of
their aims and, crucially, if the students cannot or will not help to give the lesson shape, "then nothing useful
or meaningful can be achieved at all" (Malamah- Thomas 1987: 3). And though some students may enjoy
the adventure of the jungle path, the majority will benefit both linguistically and psychologically from the
forethought the teacher has given to the lesson.

At the other end of the continuum teachers write formal plans for their classes which detail what they are
going to do and why, perhaps because they are about to be observed or because they are required to do so
by some authority.

The vast majority of lesson planning probably takes place between these two extremes. Teachers may
scribble things in their notebooks, sometimes only noting the page of a book or the name of an activity. Other
teachers may write something more complex. Perhaps they list the words they are going to need, or write
down questions they wish to ask. They may make a list of the web sites they want students to visit together
with the information they have to look for online.

We can represent this planning continuum diagrammatically in the following way:

Jungle path Vague (corridor) plan Formal plan

0% 100%

Follow the coursebook exactly Planning notes

The actual form a plan takes is less important than the thought that has gone into it; the overriding principle is
that we should have an idea of what we hope our students will achieve in the class, and that this should
guide our decisions about how to bring it about. However, written plans (both sketchy and more detailed) do
have a secondary function as a record of what has gone on, and in the lesson itself they help to remind
teachers of what they had decided to do, what materials they need, and how long they had planned to spend
on certain activities.

Making a plan
The following example of making a plan exemplifies how a teacher might proceed from pre-planning to a final
plan.

Pre-planning background
For this lesson, some of the facts that feed into pre-planning decisions are as follows:
• The class is at intermediate level. There are 31 students. They are between the ages of 18 and 31.
• They are enthusiastic and participate well when not overtired.
• The students need 'waking up' at the beginning of a lesson.
• They are quite prepared to 'have a go' with creative activities.
• Lessons take place in a light classroom equipped with a whiteboard and an overhead projector.

• The overall topic thread into which the lesson fits involves forms of transport and different traveling
• environments. In the course book this will change next week to the topic of 'avoidable disasters'.
• The next item on the grammar syllabus is the construction should have + DONE.
• The students have not had any reading skills work recently.

Unit 32 Module
 • The students need more oral fluency work.
Pre-planning decisions
As a result of the background information listed above the teacher makes the following decisions:
• The lesson should include an oral fluency activity.
• The lesson should include the introduction of should have + DONE.
• It would be nice to have some reading in the lesson.
• The lesson should continue with the transport theme - but make it significantly different in some
way.

The plan
On the basis of our pre-planning decisions we now make our plan.

It should be emphasised that the following lists are not examples of any planning format since that
is a matter of style unless we are planning formally (see below).

The teacher has made the decision to have the students read the text about a space station, and
build activities around this. The text does not come from their course book, but is one the teacher
has used before.

The probable sequence of the lesson will be:

)An oral fluency activity with 'changing groups' in which students have to reach a decision about what
)five personal possessions they would take into space.
)Reading for prediction and then gist, in which students are asked to say what they expect to be in a
)text about a space station, before reading to check their predictions and then reading again for
detailed understanding.
)Ending the story, in which students quickly devise an ending for the story.
)New language introduction in which the teacher elicits 'should have' sentences and has students say
them successfully.
)Language practice in which students talk about things they did or did not do, and which they should
not or should have done
)A space job interview in which students plan and role-play an interview for a job in a space

station. However, the teacher makes (or thinks of) a list of additional task possibilities, for example:

• Interview Cathy years later to find out what happened to her.

• Students write a 'newsflash' programme based on what happened.
• A short extract from a video on future space exploration.
• Students discuss the three things they would miss most if they were on a space station.

The Formal Plan

Formal plans are sometimes required, especially when, for example, teachers are to be
observed and/or assessed as part of a training scheme or for reasons of internal quality control. A formal
plan should contain some or all of the following elements:

Class description and timetable fit: a class description tells us who the students are, and what can be
expected of them. It can give information about how the group and how the individuals in it behave, as in the
following example:

Unit 33 Module
 CLASS DESCRIPTION
The students in this upper intermediate class are between
the ages of 18-31. There are 21 women and 10 men. There are
PAs/secretaries, 5 housewives, 10 university students (3 of these
are postgraduates), teachers, 2 businessmen, a musician
a scientist, a chef, a shop assistant and a waiter.
Because the class starts at 7:45 in the evening, students
are often quite tired after a long day at work (or at their
studies). They can switch off quite easily, especially if they are
involved in a long and not especially interesting piece of reading,
for example. However, if they get involved they can be noisy and
enthusiastic. Sometimes this enthusiasm gets a little out of
control and they start using their first language a lot.

Depending on the circumstances of the plan, the teacher may want to detail more information about
individual students, e.g. Hiromi has a sound knowledge of English and is very confident in her reading and
writing abilities. However, she tends to be rather too quiet in group-work, since she is not especially
comfortable at 'putting herself forward'. This tends to get in the way of the development of her oral fluency.
Such detailed description will be especially appropriate with smaller groups, but becomes increasingly
difficult to do accurately with larger classes.

However, a record of knowledge of individual students gained through such means as observation,
homework, and test scores is invaluable if we are to meet individual needs.
We also need to say where the lesson fits in a sequence of classes (the before and after) as in the following
example:

TIMETABLE FIT
The lesson takes place from 7:45 to 9pm on Tuesday and Thursday
evenings. In the past three lessons the students have been
discussing the issues of journeys and travelling - how people adapt
to different travelling environments. They have listened to
an interview with someone who lives in a bus and travels around the
country looking for places to park it. They have been looking at
vocabulary and expressions related to travelling. They have
revisited a number of past tenses, including hypothetical past
(third) conditionals ('If he hadn't lost his job, he wouldn't have
sold his house'). Next week the class will start working on
a
'crime and punishment' unit with includes a courtroom role-
play
with work on crime-related lexis, and passive constructions.

We will also include information about how the class has been feeling and what kind of activities they have
been involved in (eg: controlled or communicative, pair-work or group-work). All these factors should have
influenced our planning choices for this lesson.

Lesson aims
The best classroom aims are specific and directed towards an outcome which can be measured. If we say
My aim is that my students should/can... by the end of the class, we will be able to tell, after the lesson,
whether that aim has been met or not. Aims should reflect what we hope the students will be able to do, not
what the teacher is going to do. An aim such as to teach the present perfect is not really an aim at all- except
for the teacher.

Unit 34 Module
A lesson will often have more than one aim. We might well say, for example, that our overall objective is to
improve our students' reading ability, but that our specific aims are to encourage them to predict content, to

Unit 35 Module
use guessing strategies to overcome lexical problems, and to develop an imaginative response to what they
encounter.
Aims can be written in plans as in the following example:

AIMS
To allow students to practise speaking spontaneously and fluently about something that
may
provoke the use of words and phrases they have been learning
recently.
To give students practise in reading both for gist and for
detail.
To enable students to talk about what people have 'done wrong' in the past, using the 'should
(not)
have' + 'done' construction.
To have students think of the interview genre and list the kinds of questions which are asked
in
such a situation.

Activities, procedures, and timing

The main body of a formal plan lists the activities and procedures in that lesson, together with the times we
expect each of them to take. We will include the aids we are going to use, and show the different interactions
which will take place in the class.

When detailing procedure, 'symbol' shorthand is an efficient tool to describe the interactions that are taking
place: T=teacher; S=an individual student; T→C=the teacher working with the whole class; S,S,S=students
working on their own; S←→S=students working in pairs; SS←→SS=students in discussion with other pairs;
GG=students working in groups, and so on. The following example shows how the procedure of an activity
can be described:

Activity/Aids Interaction Procedure Time

1 Group decision a T→C T tells students to list five things 1’
making they would take into space with
them
B S,S,S
SS make their lists individually 2’
c S←→S
Pen and paper In pairs students have to negotiate 4’
their items to come up with a shared
list of only five items to take to a
space station
d SS←→SS
(GG) Pairs join with other pairs. The new 4’
groups have to negotiate their items
to come up with a shared list of only
five items to take to a space station
e T←→GG
The T encourages groups to compare 3’
their own lists

Unit 36 Module
Specific language that is to be focused on should also be included, as in this example:

Unit 37 Module
 Activity/Aids Interaction Procedure Time
4 Language study a T→C T elicits sentences based on the 1’
previous ‘problem identification’
session e.g. ‘She shouldn’t have
been rude to Cathy.’
Space station ‘She should have looked at the
record book.’
Text/board ‘She should have told the others
where she was going.’

T has students say the sentences, 10’

b T←→S,S,S and may do individual/class work on
the pronunciation of the shortened
form
/ʃɚɖɚv/
e.g.
should’ve, and

/ʃɚɖntɚv/
shouldn’t have.

Problems and possibilities: a good plan tries to predict potential pitfalls and suggests ways of dealing with
them. It also includes alternative activities in case we find it necessary to divert from the lesson sequence
we had hoped to follow. When listing anticipated problems it is a good idea to think ahead to
possible solutions we might adopt to resolve them, as in the following example:

Anticipated problems Possible solutions

Students may not be able to think I will keep my eyes open and
of items to take to a space station go to prompt any individuals
with them for activity 1 who look ‘vacant’ or puzzled
with questions about what
music, books, pictures, etc.
they might take
Students may have trouble I will do some isolation and
contracting ‘should not have’ in distortion work until they can
activity 4 say
/ʃɚɖntɚv/

Where we need to modify our lesson dramatically, we may choose to abandon what we are doing and use
different activities altogether. If our lesson proceeds faster than we had anticipated, on the other hand, we
may need additional material anyway. It is therefore sensible, especially in formal planning, to list additional
possibilities, as in the following example:

Unit 38 Module
 ADDITIONAL POSSIBILITIES
Extra speaking: If some groups finish first they can quickly
discuss what three things from home
they would most miss if they were on a space
station.
News broadcast: Students could write an earth
'newsflash' giving news of what happened at
the space station starting 'We interrupt this
programme to bring you news of...
Video clip: If there's time I can show the class
an extract from the 'Future of Space
Exploration' programme.
Interview plus: Interview Cathy years later to find out
what happened to her.

Planning a sequence of lessons

Planning a sequence of lessons is based on the same principles as planning a single lesson, but there are number
of additional issues which we need to pay special attention to: Before and during
However carefully we plan, in practice unforeseen things are likely to bare themselves during the course of a
lesson, and so our plans are continually modified in the light of these. Even more than a plan for
an
individual lesson, a scheme of work for weeks or months of lessons is only a proposal of what we hope to
achieve in that time. We will need to revisit this scheme constantly to update it.

Short and long-term goals

However motivated a student may be at the beginning of a course, the level of that motivation may
fall dramatically if the student is not engaged or if they cannot see where they are going -or know when they
have got there. In order for students to stay motivated, they need goals and rewards. While a satisfactory
long-term goal may be 'to master the English language', it can seem only a dim and distant possibility at
various stages of the learning cycle. In such circumstances students need short-term goals too, such as the
completion of some piece of work (or some part of the programme), and rewards such as success on small,
staged lesson tests, or taking part in activities designed to recycle knowledge and demonstrate acquisition.

When we plan a sequence of lessons, we need to build in goals for both students and ourselves to aim at,
whether they are end-of-week tests, or major revision lessons. That way we can hope to give our students a
staged progression of successfully met challenges.

Thematic strands
One way to approach a sequence of lessons is to focus on different content in each individual lesson. This
will certainly provide variety. It might be better, however, for themes to carry over for more than one lesson,
or at least to reappear, so that students perceive some coherent topic strands as the course progresses. With
such thematic threads we and our students can refer backwards and forwards both in terms of
language - especially the vocabulary that certain topics generate -and also in terms of the topics we
ask them to invest time in considering.

Language planning
When we plan language input over a sequence of lessons we want to propose a sensible progression of
syllabus elements such as grammar, lexis, and functions. We also want to build in sufficient opportunities for
recycling or remembering language, and for using language in productive skill work. If we are following a
course book closely, many of these decisions may already have been taken, but even in such circumstances
we need to keep a constant eye on how things are going, and with the knowledge of 'before and after' modify
the programme we are working from when necessary.

Language does not exist in a vacuum, however. Our decisions about how to weave it through the lesson
sequence will be heavily influenced by the need for a balance of activities.
Unit 39 Module
Activity balance
The balance of activities over a sequence of lessons is one of the features which will determine the overall
level of student involvement in the course. If we get it right, it will also provide the widest range of experience
to meet the different learning styles of the students in the class.

Over a period of weeks or months we would expect students to have received a varied diet of activities; they
should not have to role-play every day, nor would we expect every lesson to be devoted exclusively
to language study (in the ways we described it in Chapter 11). There is a danger, too, that they might become
bored if every Friday was the reading class, every Monday the presentation class, every Wednesday was
speaking and writing. In such a scenario the level of predictability may have gone beyond the sufficient to the
exaggerated. What we are looking for, instead, is a blend of the familiar and the new.

Planning a successful sequence of lessons means taking all these factors into consideration and weaving
them together into a colourful but coherent tapestry.

Using lesson plans

However carefully we plan and whatever form our plan takes we will still have to use that plan in
the classroom and use our plans as records of learning for reference.

Action and reaction

Planning a lesson is not the same as scripting a lesson. Wherever our preparations fit on the
planning continuum, what we take into the lesson is a proposal for action, rather than a lesson blueprint to be
followed
slavishly. And our proposal for action, transformed into action in the classroom, is bound to 'evoke some sort
of student reaction' (Malamah- Thomas 1987: 5). We then have to decide how to cope with that reaction and
whether, in the light of it, we can continue with our plan or whether we need to modify it as we go along.

There are a number of reasons why we may need to modify our proposal for action once a lesson is taking
place:

Magic moments
Some of the most affecting moments in language lessons happen when a conversation
develops unexpectedly, or when a topic produces a level of interest in our students which we had not
predicted. The
occurrence of such magic moments helps to provide and sustain a group's motivation. We have to recognise
them when they come along and then take a judgment about whether to allow them to develop, rather than
denying them life because they do not fit into our plan.

Sensible diversion: another reason for diversion from our original plan is when something happens which
we simply cannot ignore, whether this is a surprising student reaction to a reading text, or the
sudden announcement that someone is getting married! In the case of opportunistic teaching, we
take the opportunity to teach language that has suddenly come up. Similarly, something might occur to us in
terms of topic or in terms of a language connection which we suddenly want to develop on the spot.

Unforeseen problems: however well we plan, unforeseen problems often crop up. Some students may find
an activity that we thought interesting incredibly boring; an activity may take more or less time than
we anticipated. It is possible that something we thought would be fairly simple for our students turns out to be
very difficult (or vice versa). We may have planned an activity based on the number of students we expected
to turn up, only to find that some of them are absent. Occasionally we find that students have already come
across material or topics we take into class, and our common sense tells us that it would be unwise to carry
on.

In any of the above scenarios it would be almost impossible to carry on with our plan as if nothing
had happened; if an activity finishes quickly we have to find something else to fill the time. If students cannot
do what we are asking of them, we will have to modify what we
are asking of them. If some students (but not all) have already finished an activity we cannot just leave those
students to get bored.

Unit 40 Module
It is possible to anticipate potential problems in the class and to plan strategies to deal with them.
But however well we do this, things will still happen that surprise us, and which, therefore, cause us to move
away from our plan, whether this is a temporary or permanent state of affairs.

However well we plan, our plan is just a suggestion of what we might do in class. Everything depends upon
how our students respond and relate to it. In Jim Scrivener's words, 'prepare thoroughly. But in class, teach
the learners -not the plan' (Scrivener 1994b: 44).

Plans as records and research tools

Written plans are not just proposals for future action; they are also records of what has taken place. Thus,
when we are in the middle of a sequence of lessons, we can look back at what we have done in order to
decide what to do next.

Since we may have to modify our lessons depending on student reactions we need to keep a record of how
successful certain activities were to aid our memory.

A record of lessons can also help colleagues if and when they have to teach for us when we are absent.

Our original written plans will, therefore, have to be modified in the light of what actually happened in the
classes we taught. This may simply mean crossing out the original activity title or course book page number,
and replacing it with what we used in reality. However, if we have time to record how we and the students
experienced the lesson, reflecting carefully on successful and less successful activities, not only will this help
us to make changes if and when we want to use the same activities again, but it will also lead us to think
about how we teach and consider changes in both activities and approach. Lesson planning in this
way allows us to act as our own observers and aids us in our own development.

Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.

Unit 41 Module
 TASK FOR SUBMISSION TO YOUR TUTOR

TASK 1

And now the big one.

You have had a great deal of input on how to organise lessons, what needs
to be taken into consideration, how language works, what students are like
and so on. Your task is to prepare a lesson plan to teach a group of ESOL
students a language point of your choice (grammar, vocabulary or function).

You should begin with a pre-plan:

Clearly indicate rough timing of the lesson. It should be 45 minutes or more.

Indicate the aims and level of the lesson and the target language.
Indicate your assumptions: what you expect students to know before the
lesson.
Indicate the expected problems and suggest solutions to them.

Then continue with the lesson sequence:

Show clearly different stages of the lesson and indicate the role of the
teacher at each of these stages.
Remember to focus on the target language. Show that you have a clear idea
how it is used.
Remember to include a variety of activities.
Remember to include different types of grouping in your lesson.

Together with the plan, submit any worksheets, reading texts or other
materials that you plan to use, so that these may be assessed.

Finally:

Say what the last lesson might have been and what a follow-up lesson might
be.

Part 2. Self-development
Unit 42 Module
This part is all about the support that is available for you. As an EFL teacher
in the 21st century you are part of a global community and you should never
feel lonely!

The INTESOL course is finished but your life as a teacher is not finished.
Some of you on this course are already teaching in classrooms, some of you
are about to start and others may be doing private lessons. Whatever you are
doing you must never stop looking for ways to improve your teaching and
learning throughout your professional life. You do not know all there is to
know about teaching, nor do the INTESOL team. Be a lifelong learner!

You

The most important person for ensuring that you develop as a teacher is you
yourself. Always reflect on your lessons and be prepared for change and
experimentation.

Some teachers keep a teaching diary where they note things down on a
regular basis. They may keep a record of how they feel about their lessons,
any good ideas they had, any lessons that didn’t go well and other details.
Teachers who keep diaries report that they are an excellent way of focusing
your mind on what goes on in your classes and they can be organised as you
wish.

Colleagues

They are always around, but it is surprising how often teachers in the same
staffroom do not talk to each other very much!

It is very easy for a non-sharing atmosphere to develop among colleagues

who are pressed for time and feeling insecure about their teaching. Staff
rooms become competitive, and teachers keep all their best ideas to
themselves. If this atmosphere develops or has already developed in the
place where you go to work, then try to change it little by little.

Make a notice board where teachers can pin up their new ideas. Suggest
adding a five-minute ‘new idea of the week’ section to staff meetings.
Individually ask colleagues for assistance. Perhaps you have just thought of a
new teaching activity which looks good. It may look perfect to you, but your
colleague could help you develop the idea. Explaining an idea to a colleague

Unit 43 Module
is very useful practice before explaining to learners - if your colleague cannot
follow the activity then probably the learners won’t either! Similarly, if you
have been having a problem with a few of the learners, don’t be afraid to say
so to a colleague. You may find that he/she had the same problem with the
same learners last year. You can brainstorm a solution together! When you
have a good relationship with colleagues, ask if you can sit in on their
lessons. This is a good way to make yourself aware of the varied techniques
that teachers use and you will definitely pick up some new ideas.

Experienced colleagues, often with positions such as Senior Teacher or Head

of English can be very helpful and reassuring and are often more available
when you want to ask for help as their teaching load is less. However, if your
Senior Teacher always looks busy and harassed then make a formal
appointment to see them. Ask them to observe your lessons informally and to
give you their advice, don’t wait for formal assessments!

Being observed

Two words to set the hearts of teachers quivering. But lesson observation is a
very important part of development if it is handled well.

1. Show your proposed lesson plan for your observation to other

colleagues and listen to their suggestions.
2. Do not be overly ambitious and try to reinvent the wheel. Keeping
things simple is your best bet. As INTESOL trainers we have seen
teachers going crazy with endless flashcards that end up on the floor,
activities that are incomprehensible, video clips that are too complicated
and so on, and the ensuing lesson is a muddle.
3. Don’t suddenly spring new techniques on your students just because
your ‘boss’ is coming in. They will not understand what you are doing
and you will make them nervous too.
4. Include a clear language teaching point in your lesson so that the
observer understands that you can teach language.
5. Most of all listen to what the observer tells you. Observers are not
hostile people who want to fire you; they are there to make sure that
you are coping in your classroom and that the students are getting a
good experience.

Not all goes smoothly in teaching. Sometimes you can feel that the students
are restless or uneasy. It may be time to get them involved in feeding back or
evaluating what they are doing and how they see you as a teacher.

Unit 44 Module
SELF-CHECK 4:2 7

You want to find out what your learners think of :

1. You as a teacher.
2. The teaching styles and activities you use.
3. The course.
4. A particular lesson.

How many ways can you think of for doing this?

COMMENT

The simple two-word answer here is ‘ask them’. But it is how you ask them
that is interesting. Read on.

You care about whether you are doing well or badly. It is very important for
our professional development that we do not sit back and presume that we
are doing everything right, or alternatively, plod on, depressed and thinking
everything we do is wrong! Ask the learners.

Learners’ feedback to you

Take an activity that you might wish to change in some way. Give out a
questionnaire (example shown below) after the activity/lesson and ask the
learners to tick the appropriate boxes. Tell them that you do not want their
names on the paper and, while they are filling in the questionnaire, stay at
your desk to ensure their privacy. You can also tell them why you are using
these questionnaires: to develop your techniques, to help them learn better,
etc. Find time in the next lesson to talk to them about the results. Eg
‘Most of you enjoyed the roleplay, but you didn’t think the competitive ‘find the
information’ was very useful.’

Unit 45 Module
Please fill in the questionnaire about today’s lesson/ an activity:
Number the following stages from 1 to 5. (1= very interesting/ useful
5= not interesting/not useful)

The brainstorming before reading the text: Guess the title

The skimming activity: 3 minutes to change your title
The scanning activity: Who can find the information first?
The careful reading: Who was where at the time of the murder?
The roleplay: Act out one of the possible versions of the murder
(groups)

Any suggestions/comments?

Using the results of the questionnaire, you can locate points in the lesson
which were effective and those that were not very effective from the learners’
point of view.
However you get the information and whatever it is, use it and share it.

You can also organise discussions with students about their learning. It can
work well if you leave the room for 5 minutes to allow them to discuss points
they want to raise and write them on the white board. You can then return
and discuss them. But you must be able to accept what they say and not get
angry if they give their honest opinion of your ability with flashcards or your
punctuality! Feedback is usually very valuable indeed as it clears the air of
any little points that are worrying the students and usually they have nice
things to say about you as well.

Formal events and local groups

Seminars and conferences are where you can pick up some of the latest
developments in ELT and useful ideas for teaching. It is also fun to make
contact with nationally or internationally recognised people in ELT. Many ‘big
names’ in teaching, including the writer of your course text book Jeremy
Harmer, can be found at conferences. Your access to such events will
depend on where you live and how much money you have available to travel,

Unit 46 Module
but most big conferences also post their proceedings on the web these days,
so you can catch up on events you missed.
The International teachers and educators group IATEFL hold a big
conference each year and have groups in many countries. Their contact
details appear on their website www.iatefl.org. Another organisation that
supports teachers and organises events is TESOL International Association
(www.tesol.org).

Join TESOL/TEFL/TESL groups and communities in social networks to stay

in contact with colleagues worldwide. Twitter offers a convenient way to get
links to daily updates from the world of TESOL which allows you to keep up
to speed with the latest news and developments. You can follow some
important TESOL people on Twitter, such as coursebook authors, and get
updates from them personally.

Literature and publications

Books are wonderful friends, especially for those of you who do a lot of
private teaching and do not have as many colleagues. Harmer gives a
comprehensive list of useful titles and INTESOL has a short list too. Books
are great sources of ideas, but don’t neglect the journals, newspapers and
magazines that are also around. Harmer mentions one or two major
publications that you might like to subscribe to. The EL Gazette is a lively
newspaper format publication looking at new developments in ELT and with
plenty of information on study opportunities. It is available online.

There are thousands of ELT websites; some are small ones that teachers
have set up on their own and some are huge organisations. Obviously new
ones are developing all the time. Approach web materials with care as they
are not always very professional but there are wonderful ideas out there. You
may already have a favourite site.

Further training

The most obvious ‘next step up’ in terms of training and qualifications is a
Diploma in English Language Teaching when you have had some more
experience. Such a course goes into linguistics and developments in
methodology in more depth and takes a serious look at such issues as
phonology and culture in ELT. The more years you have behind you, the
more you bring to a course at that level. When you feel up to the challenge,

Unit 47 Module
you might also look at the many university-run MA programmes, some of
which can be done by distance.

On the other hand, you may want to specialise and take our Advanced
Certificate Course in Teaching Business English.

So development does not end after the course. There are many options open
to you and many opportunities that you can create for yourself and your
colleagues.

Your final task for this course is designed to focus forwards to your future
development.

Now consider the following extract:

What teachers do next

In her course for language teachers, Penny Ur discussed the difference between teachers 'with 20 years'
experience and those with one year's experience repeated 20 times' (Ur 1996: 317). Naturally we admire the
first teacher and disapprove of (or sympathise with) the second. Nothing could be more deadening
for a teacher than 20 years of repetition, especially in the interactive and dynamic world of the classroom.
Our students, too, deserve teachers who are alive to the possibility of change and who keep up-to-date with
what is going on, not only in the world of English language teaching, but also in the world at large.
The truth, however, is that no matter how much we enjoy meeting new students at the beginning of a new
course, it is sometimes difficult to maintain a sense of excitement and engagement when using the same old
lesson routines or reading texts time after time. The increasing predictability of student reactions and
behaviour can - if we do not take steps to prevent it - dent even the most ardent initial enthusiasm. Teaching
should be different from this, though. It can and should be a permanent process of change and growth.
At the beginning of our careers we go on teacher training courses where we are taught what to do. It is as
our careers develop, however, that instead of being trained (or in addition to be trained), we should seek to
develop ourselves and our teaching.
Teacher development means many different things to different people. Brian Tomlinson suggests that in a
teacher development approach teachers are given new experiences to reflect and learn from
(Tomlinson
2003). For him, the best of these tools is to involve teachers in writing teaching materials since when they do
this they have to think carefully about what they want to do, why they want to do it and how to
make it happen. Bill Templer, on the other hand, thinks that 'we need to hold up mirrors to our own practice,
making more conscious what is beneath the surface' (Templer 2004). Paul Davis says that 'as
development becomes more powerful, the role of the trainer will become less important' (Davis 1999).
Sandra Piai was extremely impressed to hear a participant in a teacher development workshop say 'You can
train me, and you can educate me, but you can't develop me - I develop' (Piai 2005: 21).

Reflection paths
Holding up mirrors to our practice (in Templer's words - see above) means being a reflective teacher.
In other words, we need to think about (to reflect on) what we are doing and why. Some reflection is simply a
matter of thinking about what is happening in our lessons (and our lives) as we take the metro home from
work, but there are a number of more organised ways of doing this.
Unit 48 Module
Keeping journals
One way of provoking self-analysis and reflection on our teaching is by keeping our own journals in which
we record our thoughts about our teaching and our students. Journals are powerful reflective devices which
allow us to use introspection to make sense of what is going on around us.
Journal-writing is powerful for two main reasons. In the first place, the act of writing the journal forces us to
try to put into words thoughts which, up till then, are inchoate, offering, in this condition, little chance for real
introspection. Secondly, the act of reading our own journals makes us engage again with what we
experienced, felt or worried about. As a result of this re-engagement, we might quite possibly come
to conclusions about what to do next.

Negative and positive

If real development can only come from within, then it is by looking inside ourselves and seeking
to understand or change what we find there that is likely to be the most effective way of moving forward and
making things better.
Linda Bawcom, in an article devoted to preventing stress and countering teacher burnout,
suggests making lists and seeing what they tell us. For example, we might draw up a list of professional
priorities, such as the one in Figure 1. In the left-hand column we say what actually happens by numbering
the items
1-12. Then, in the right-hand column, we re-prioritise the items as we would like them to be. The difference
between the reality and what we wish for gives us the beginnings of a development plan.

Recording ourselves
Another way of reflecting upon our own teaching practice is to record ourselves. Bill Templer (see above)
suggests using a cheap tape recorder which we can leave running during the lesson. When the lesson is
over, we can listen to the tape to remind us of what went on. Frequently, this will lead us to reflect on what
happened and perhaps cause us to think of how we might do things differently in the future.
Many teachers have derived benefit (and some surprise) from having their lessons filmed.
Watching ourselves at work is often slightly uncomfortable, but it can also show us things which we were not
aware of.

Professional literature
There is much to be learnt from the various methodology books, journals and magazines produced
for teachers of English. Books and articles written by teachers and theorists will often open our eyes to new
possibilities. They may also form part of action research or 'search' and 'research' cycles (see below), either
by raising an issue which we want to focus on or by helping us to formulate the kinds of questions we wish to
ask.
There are a number of different journals which cater for different tastes; whereas some report on
Unit 49 Module
academic research, others prefer to describe classroom activities in detail, often with personal
comment from the writer. Some journals impose a formal style on their contributors, whereas others allow for
a variety of approaches, including letters and short reports. Some journals are now published
exclusively on the Internet, while others have Internet archives of past articles.
When teachers join professional teacher organisations, they often receive that organisation's journal or
newsletter. Members of special interest groups (such as the Teacher Development Special Interest Group -
TD SIG – of IATEFL) will also get publications for that SIG. These newsletters and journals are a valuable
way of keeping in touch with what is going on in the world of English language teaching. Not only do they
inform us about new developments and ideas, but they also keep us in touch with colleagues
whose concerns, it soon becomes apparent, are similar to ours.

Action research
This starts when we identify an issue we wish to investigate. We may want to know more about our learners
and what they find motivating and challenging. We might want to learn more about ourselves as teachers -
how effective we are, how we look at our students, how we would look at ourselves if we were observing our
own teaching. We might want to gauge the interest generated by certain topics or judge the effectiveness of
certain activity types. We might want to see if an activity would work better done in groups rather than pairs,
or investigate whether reading is more effective with or without pre-teaching vocabulary. We might want to
find out why something isn't working.
Whichever of these issues we choose, we will want to formulate questions we want answered so that we
can decide how we are going to gather data. Having collected the data, we analyse the results, and it is on
the basis of these results that we decide what to do next. We may then subject this new decision to the
same examination that the original issue generated (this possibility is reflected by the broken line in Figure
2). Alternatively, having resolved one issue, we may focus on a different problem and start the
process afresh for that issue.

Gathering data
In order for our inquiry or case study to be effective, we have to gather data. There are many ways of doing
this, but two of them have already been mentioned above. For example, we might decide to keep a journal
about one specific aspect of teaching (e.g. what happens when students work in groups) and write entries
about this at the end of every day's teaching. After, say, 14 days of this, we will have a lot of
evidence. Alternatively, we might record ourselves (or have ourselves filmed) doing particular tasks so
that we can assess their effectiveness. But there are other data-gathering methods, too.

• Observation tasks: we can design data-gathering worksheets which are easy to use, but which
will give us valuable information. For example, we could have a list of student names in a column. Each
time a student says something, we can put a tick against his or her name. After a few lessons we will
have a much clearer and more accurate idea of individual participation.

Unit 50 Module
 • Interviews: we can interview students and colleagues about activities, materials, techniques and
procedures.

• Written questionnaires: questionnaires, which are sometimes more effective than the interviews we
described above, can get respondents to answer open questions such as How did you feel about activity X?,
yes/no questions such as Did you find activity X easy? or questions which ask for some kind of rating
response.
• Breaking rules and changing environments: in a groundbreaking work, John Fanselow (1987)
suggested that one way of developing is to break our own rules and see what happens. If we normally
teach one way, in other words, we should try teaching in the opposite way and see what effect it has. If
we normally move around the class all the time, perhaps we should see what happens if we spend the
whole lesson sitting in the same place. The results may be surprising and will never be less
than interesting.
One way to help us think about doing things differently is a technique called 'Cataloguing nightmares'
(see Figure 3). In this we complete the left - hand column with a list of the things that go wrong - or that
we are frightened might go wrong - in our lessons. In the next column, we say what happens
which makes these things go wrong. Finally, in the right-hand column, we write down an opposite
procedure from the one described in the middle column. We now have a plan of action for breaking rules
- or at least completely upending the routines we use. Our new 'opposite procedure' may not work, but at
least it will allow us to view the problem differently and maybe gain some insights into how to change
things (again) in the future.

Developing with others

Not all reflection, reading or action research needs to be done by teachers working alone. There are many
ways teachers can confer with each other and develop together, either face to face or, increasingly, online.

Cooperative/collaborative development
Teachers, like anyone else, need chances to discuss what they are doing and what happens to
them in class so that they can examine their beliefs and feelings. However much we have reflected
on our own experiences and practice, most of us find discussing our situation with others helps us to sort
things out in our own mind. Julian Edge coined the term cooperative development (Edge 1992a and b)
to describe a specific kind of relationship between speakers and the people listening to them. In cooperative
development
'a relationship of trust is necessary' (Edge 2003: 58) between speakers who interact with
understanders; a teacher, in this case, talks to an empathetic colleague. The empathetic colleague (the
understander) makes every effort to understand the speaker but crucially, in Edge's realisation, does not
interpret, explain or judge what he or she is hearing. All that is necessary is for the understander to say 'This
is what I'm hearing. This is what I've understood. Have I got it right?' (Edge 1992a: 65). The understander's
side of the bargain is that
'she will put aside her own thoughts, ideas and evaluations in order to concentrate on understanding what
the speaker has to say' (Edge 2003: 58).
Unit 51 Module
 This style of empathising is similar to 'co-counselling', where two people agree to meet and divide the
allotted time in half so that each is a speaker and listener for an equal time period (Head and Taylor 1997:
143-144).

Peer teaching, peer observation

In our teaching lives we are frequently observed by others. It starts on teacher training courses and goes on
when academic coordinators or directors of study come into our lessons as part of some quality
control exercise. In all these situations the observed teacher is at a disadvantage since the observers -
however sympathetically they carry out their function - have power over the teacher's future career. There are
very few teachers who welcome this kind of visitation.
However, many of us would welcome the opportunity to talk to someone about a lesson we have
just taught, hoping that they would help us to understand what happened at certain moments or suggest
ways of making things more effective. This was the case with a teacher called Poh in Hong Kong who invited
her colleague Thomas Farrell into her lessons as part of her own self-development. She wanted an outsider's
view of her teaching practices, a view which was not totally dependent on her own or her students' reactions.
Thomas Farrell thus became her 'critical friend' and soon noted, with interest, that even before Poh had seen
his observation notes, she 'addressed most of the issues I had raised'. Perhaps Farrell had taken
on a
'proactive role of promoting reflection within our friendship by acting as a catalyst for Poh to look at
her teaching' (Farrell 2001: 372).

It sounds like the ideal arrangement - equal colleagues observing each other so that they (or at least one
of them) can develop.

Teachers' groups
One of the most supportive environments for teachers, where real teacher development can take place, is in
small teacher groups. In this situation colleagues, usually working in the same school, meet together
to discuss any issues and problems which may arise in the course of their teaching.
Some teacher development meetings of this kind are organised by principals and directors of
study. Outside speakers and animators are occasionally brought in to facilitate discussions. The director of
studies may select a topic - in conjunction with the teachers - and then asks a member of staff to lead a
session. What emerges is something halfway between bottom-up teacher development and top-down
in-service teacher training (INSETT). At their best, such regular meetings are extremely stimulating and
insightful. In many schools an INSETT coordinator is appointed to arrange a teacher development
programme. Where this is done effectively, he or she will consult widely with colleagues to see what they
would most like to work on and with.

Teachers' associations
There are many teachers' associations around the world. Some of them are international, such as IATEFL,
based in Britain and TESOL, based in the USA; some are country-based, such as JALT (in Japan), FAAPI (in
Argentina), ELICOS (in Australia) or ATECR (in the Czech Republic); still others are smaller and regional,
such as APIGA (in Galicia, Spain) or CELTA (in Cambridge, England).

Teachers' associations provide two possible development opportunities:

• Conferences and seminars: conferences, meetings and workshops allow us to hear about the latest
developments in the field, take part in investigative workshops and enter into debates about
current issues in theory and practice. We can 'network' with other members of the ELT community and,
best of all, we learn that other people from different places, different countries and systems even, share
similar problems and are themselves searching for solutions.
Perhaps the best moments in conferences are the conversations that participants have with
each other after they've been to talks and workshops. As we walk out of other people's sessions, we

Unit 52 Module
 compare notes with fellow attenders, and as we do so, we find ourselves having to justify why we have
reacted

Unit 53 Module
 as we have to what we have heard. These exchanges are often significantly more important than the
sessions themselves since they offer very real (even if short) self-development opportunities as
we grapple with our feelings and thoughts about what we have experienced.

• Presenting: submitting a paper or a workshop for a teachers' association meeting, whether regional,
national or international, is one of the most powerful catalysts for reflecting upon our practice. When we
try to work out exactly what we want to say and the best way of doing it, we are forcing ourselves to
assess what we do. The challenge of a future audience sharpens our perceptions.

The virtual community

There is no real substitute for people meeting together in the same physical space to share experiences,
ideas, hopes and fears. But there are alternatives, and the plethora of different sites and user groups on the
Internet offers teachers considerable scope in talking to colleagues all over the world at all hours of the day
or night. There are many different groups of this kind. There are also people who meet when taking part in
real-time chat forums (quite apart from conference calls using audio or videoware). In the future it will be
increasingly common and unsensational for people to contact each other online like this.
We have said that real face-to-face communication is always better than online discussion whether or not
it takes place in real time or whether it is the result of emails posted on a group noticeboard at
different times. Yet the huge advantage of online communication is the fact that someone from Ankara, say,
can talk to someone from Vermont very easily - and that all the other members of the group, whether or not
they are participating or lurking (i.e. reading all the postings without replying), can be members of the group
wherever they are located.

Moving outwards and sideways

In order to enhance professional and personal growth, teachers sometimes need to step outside the world of
the classroom where the concentration, all too frequently, is on knowledge and skill alone. There are other
issues and practices which can be of immense help in making their professional understanding
more profound and their working reality more rewarding.
Learning by learning
One of the best ways of reflecting upon our teaching practice is to become learners ourselves again, so that
our view of the learning-teaching process is not always influenced from one side of that
relationship. By voluntarily submitting ourselves to a new learning experience, especially (but not only) if this
involves us in learning a new language, our view of our students' experience can be changed. As Luke
Prodromou found when he decided to learn Spanish, ‘Going back to school, and being on the
receiving end of the foreign language learning process, confronted me with challenge after challenge
to my assumptions about good language teaching' (2002b: 58).

Supplementing teaching
One way of countering the potential sameness of a teacher's life is to increase our range of occupations and
interests so that teaching becomes the fixed centre in a more varied and interesting professional life.
There are many tasks that make a valuable contribution to the teaching and learning of English.
First among these is writing materials - whether these are one-off activities, longer units or whole books.
Materials writing can be challenging and stimulating, and when done in tandem with teaching can
provide us with powerful insights, so that both the writing and the teaching become significantly
more involving and enjoyable.
Teachers can become involved in far more than just materials (or article) writing, however.
The various exam boards such as Cambridge ESOL, Trinity Exams, TOEFL, TOEIC and others are always
on the lookout for markers, examiners and item writers. As with publishing, teachers who are interested in
this area should find out the name of the relevant subject officer and write to them, expressing their interest
and saying who they are and where they work.

Unit 54 Module
 Many people now set up their own websites where they provide material either by subscription or free of
charge. It is no longer difficult or expensive to record material which can be made available as MP3 files (and
so be downloaded as podcasts). Other teachers help to organise entertainments for their students or run
drama groups, sports teams or conversation get-togethers.
Many teachers see a change of teaching sector as a developmental move, both as a way of researching
teaching and also as a way of making life more challenging and more interesting. Perhaps the
most interesting move, in this sense, is to become involved in training teachers since this is not only
extremely rewarding but also forces us to examine what we do and how we do it in a way that has huge
developmental benefits. But any move to a different kind of teaching (such as one-to-one, exam
teaching or business English, if these are things we have not done before) will force us to look at our
teaching afresh and, by providing us with new challenges, has the power to revitalise our professional lives.
Finally, some teachers become involved in the running and organising of teachers' associations.
Most associations allow any member to stand for election and there is no doubt that those who
become committee members, treasurers and presidents of, say, IATEFL or TESOL get a huge amount of
personal satisfaction from being involved in running organisations like this.

Being well
Teachers need to care for their bodies to counteract stress and fatigue. Katie Head and Pauline
Taylor (1997: Chapter 6) suggest techniques for breathing and progressive relaxation. They advocate the
use of disciplines such as Tai-chi, yoga and the Alexander technique to achieve greater physical
ease and counteract possible burnout.

One of a teacher's chief physical attributes is the voice. Roz Comins observes that at least one in
ten long-serving teachers need clinical help at some time in their career to counteract vocal damage (1999:
8). Yet voice is part of the whole person, both physically and emotionally. When we misuse it, it will let us
down. But when we care for it, it will help to keep us healthy and build our confidence. We can do this by
breathing correctly and resting our voice and ourselves when necessary. We can drink water or herbal tea
rather than ordinary tea, coffee or cola if and when we suffer from laryngitis; we can adjust our pitch and
volume and avoid shouting and whispering.
Many teachers work long hours in stressful and challenging situations. At the primary level they seem to
be vulnerable to many of the minor illnesses that their students bring with them to school. Keeping healthy by
taking exercise and getting between six and a half and eight hours’ sleep a night are ways of
counteracting this.

Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.

TASK TO BE SUBMITTED TO YOUR TUTOR

Unit 55 Module
TASK 2

First, make notes on the following, thinking about your teaching and perhaps
other things in your life:

The aspects of this course I have been most interested in are………………

Immediately after finishing this course I………………..

Over the next 6 months I …………………….

Over the next 5 years I ………………………

1. Using the notes you make and any other relevant information, write a
short report to us (300 words) saying what you have enjoyed on the
course, how you see yourself developing over the next 5 years and
what areas of your teaching life you would especially like to concentrate
on.

2. Keep a copy - looking at it from time to time may remind you of your
‘promises’ to yourself.

Goodbye and the very best of luck.

Copyright INTESOL Worldwide 2019

Unit 56 Module