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Concourse 2

Planning a lesson step by step: some examples

plan

You should have followed the general guide to planning before coming here (new tab).  But no matter.


3

3 types of lesson

There are all sorts of lessons but they can, slightly loosely, be boiled down to three sorts.

thinkwrite Task 1: Think for a moment about the kinds of lessons you have experienced in your own life and make a short list of the sorts of lessons you encountered.  They don't need to be language lessons.
Click here when you have a list of two or three.

So, the first question to answer when you sit down to plan a lesson is: What sort of lesson is it?
The answer will determine how it is structured.


stages

Stages

presentation lessons

These will need three stages at least.  Here they are:

  1. presenting the new language or skill
  2. carefully practising the language or skill in a situation which avoids too much error.  In other words, this stage must be quite tightly controlled
  3. using the new language or skill more freely and in a way which is personal and clearly relevant to the learners

Now you need to download an example of a plan of this sort.  Click here to do that.  The plan will open in an new tab so you can have it on screen or print it out (or even use it!).

downloadread Task 2: Read through the plan to identify :
  1. When the language is presented
  2. When controlled practice happens
  3. When the learners use the language more freely
Click here when you have done that.

This is an example of what is called a PPP lesson: Present – Practise – Produce.  It is probably the most commonly used plan in the profession.
The lesson staging can be used for many different purposes.  For example, it could easily be adapted to present and practise things you are allowed to do (I can ...) and things that are forbidden (We can't ... / mustn't ...).  All that's needed is some different pictures and a change to the worksheet.

skills lessons

downloadread Task 3: Now download a skill lesson plan and do the same thing.  Read through the plan to identify :
  1. When the skill is presented
  2. When controlled practice happens
  3. When the learners use the language more freely
Click here when you have done that.

revision lessons

think Task 4: There's no example for this because, rather obviously, it depends on what you are revising.  For the two lessons above, however, think for a moment about how you might revise the targets and then click here.

The important thing is that language and skills lessons need to be revised.

There's no test in this area (there were enough already) but now you can go and plan a lesson!



Related guides
planning for the first guide which discusses the background to planning
needs analyses for a guide to how to find out what learners need to learn which will inform aim setting
lesson structures to see how the overall shape of lessons can vary
activity types for a guide to the three essential forms of activities and what they do
task types to see how the types of task may affect what you are planning to do
Bloom's taxonomy this is a categorisation of objectives in teaching which can help to set challenges

There are some more examples of plans you can copy, use adapt or analyse in the teachers' section of this site.