Employability skills

2. One of the most important reasons to plan your lessons is to identify the aims of the lesson. Teachers need to know what it is they want their students to be able to do at the end of the lesson that they couldn't do before or couldn’t do well before.

Here are some more reasons lesson planning is important:

• It gives the teacher the opportunity to predict possible problems that may arise and therefore consider solutions to these problems.
• It helps to make sure that the lesson is balanced and appropriate for class.
• It will give the teacher confidence going into the classroom.

3. The most important thing to think about when writing your lesson plan is the aim of the lesson. This means thinking about what your learners will be better able to do by the end of the lesson. You need to have a clear aim in mind when writing your lesson plan. This will allow you to deliver a much better lesson and it will be evident to the learners too.

Activity

Match the sentences together to create some examples of lesson aims.

tips on lesson planning

Always look over your lesson plan and edit and adjust it accordingly. Remember that you may have the best lesson plan ever, but it won’t work in all your classes! Each class is different and your lesson plan should take into account these differences.

Approaches to Lesson Planning

• There are many different approaches that can be used for lesson planning. Every teacher will differ in their teaching style and in their approach to lesson planning. It may be that you pursue a different approach depending on what you are teaching and the students you have in your class.
• Before we look at some different lesson types and approaches, can you remember what the terms below mean?

what the terms below mean?

Summary of Approaches: PPP or Audiolingual

• Based on the behaviourist approach, the aim is to present learners with a new piece of language, explain the rules, provide a variety of limited practice activities in which to start using the new language, then finally give learners the opportunity to produce the language themselves in a more limited manner. This method is great for newer teachers as it is reliable and it's used regularly so learners will be familiar with the structure. However, if executed poorly it can lack opportunities for student-to-student interaction and it can be dull, especially if the teacher does not get the learners involved in the lesson from the start.