EXAMPLE LESSON PLANS

A FEW FINAL WORDS:

It’s a good idea to include your intentions (objectives), what you expect the students to do (how you’re going about that) and what you as the teacher will be doing for different reasons.  When somebody other than the teacher is reading the lesson plan, it is not always clear how and why things are to be done in a certain way.  For that matter, it might not be clear to the teacher either, so it is a good exercise to get accustomed to including those extra details.  Sometimes a class goes over very well and the teacher wants to save the lesson plan to use with another class some time in the future.  A year later when you look at the plan again and are trying to interpret what to do and why it should be done, there may be some ideas lost or unclear because they weren’t spelled out in the original.

Two more tips for lesson planners:
1) If you’re having an official observation or have to fill out your lesson plan using a certain form, make another version for yourself that you can easily follow while you are actually teaching.  It might just be a series of big circled numbers listed on a page with a few notes jotted down to remind you what to do in which order.  Or it could be a power point presentation with detailed notes in the margins describing step be step what you want to say and do.  Whatever helps you feel comfortable and directed during the class should by the notes you follow while teaching.  And if there are official forms, then you can do them in the expected way to give to the proper people.

2) During or shortly after the class, make a few notes which reflect any insights or ideas that come to mind when executing the plan.  Maybe some issues came up, students had some good suggestions or you had an inspiration.  This can help you immensely if you want to repeat the plan with another class, or when you are thinking what to do in the next class.

Imagine you have to teach the difference between Past Simple and Present Perfect but you don’t like how it’s presented in the student book.  You begin thinking of different alternative ways to teach that class without using the material in the book.  You come across an interesting video which is an interview of a famous celebrity you think many of your students like.  How would you develop your lesson plan from here?

NOTE:  In this challenge there is a range of levels.  Choose one (elementary, pre-intermediate or intermediate) and base your lesson plan on that perspective.

If it is the first time our students have seen the Present Perfect, it is quite likely that the Past Simple would not play a big role in that class.  If they have seen it before, but maybe only briefly in the previous course last year, then your class may not use the Past Simple much, either.  If the students have had some reasonable experience with the Present Perfect before, or you feel they are all capable of handling two verb tenses (the Present Perfect and the Past Simple), then the provided lesson plan is one way you could approach it.

The Present Perfect is used for different situations and sometimes the simple or the continuous form is more appropriate or correct.  It is best not to mix the different functions unless it is a review after the students have had some exposure to the different applications beforehand.

It’s important to monitor your students to see how they are coping with the information, to give them support and clear direction, as well as ample opportunities to practice and explore before attempting the Production activity.  By being observant on how well they are dealing with the Present Perfect, you can make better decisions on what needs more work and where to challenge them further.

Your students requested a few songs to do in class and you decide that one of them could be possible to cover at that level.  Let’s imagine there are a couple good expressions in the chorus and a couple more in the rest of the song.  You feel that these expressions could be useful for the students to learn as the target language.  There are a few other words or expressions that would be helpful to learn as well, especially in understanding some important parts of the song, so these could be dealt with in the Introduction activity.  Try using the PPP model to write a lesson plan for this class.

If you want to do part of your class working with a song and later perhaps using it to stimulate a speaking activity or two, the PPP model wouldn’t normally be your first option.  The PWP model would be easier to work with in this regard, for example.  Or if you just want to approach the song as a quick activity and not go through the whole process of following a complete model, it is still recommended to have a clear objective on how the song would work to help your students in some way.

If a strong part of the class was focussed on learning and using new vocabulary that comes from the song, the PPP model becomes a more viable option.  It is still not the only way to do things, but it is one possibility.  Have a look at how one interpretation might look.

Imagine you think the same song you used for a lower level group would be fun for your advanced class.  Obviously you wouldn’t have the students do the exact same thing because their needs are different.  You think that it is time for that group of students to work on their pronunciation more.  The suggestion is to focus on teaching connected speech following the PPP model, and that is the challenge set to you.  However, if you are new to teaching, then you may not be ready for this.  If that is the case, work on a different aspect of pronunciation (ex: word stress, sentence stress, consonant clusters, difficult sounds for your students).  That would be fine as long as it is appropriate for a high level.  Also remember that you want to keep the students involved in your Presentation, not to make it only or mostly you lecturing.  How would you go about it?

There are already several examples of activities and lesson plans focussing on grammar or vocabulary in this article.  I wanted to include something that is a little different, but could still fit into our look at lesson planning using the PPP model.  In this case the language focus will be on pronunciation.  Phonology is a language system, no less so than grammar or vocabulary, so it can very easily fit into the PPP model.  Let’s imagine that our advanced students have difficulty understanding people when they speak quickly or not very carefully.  Our students could also work on their own speaking skills, particularly in the area of relaxed speech where the sounds seem to merge together.  Just like grammar and vocabulary, there are some rules to guide the language learners, you can’t teach them all at once, or expect the student to master them in just one class.  In today’s class we are going to introduce the students to 3 aspects of connected speech.  These are three frequent ways sounds are changed when English is spoken in a relaxed manner as opposed to a very careful, even formal style.

A- some sounds change  ex:  Did you → Dijou   (the ‘d’ and the ‘y’ change to ‘j’)
B- some sounds disappear  ex:   Sit down → Sidown   (the ‘t’ disappears when next to a strong ‘d’)
C- some sounds join together in perhaps unexpected ways  ex: not at all → no ta tall  (consonants join vowels)

The lesson plan will deal with all three of the above changes occurring during connected speech, but if you prefer to focus on just one or two of them, then do so.  Before plotting out your lesson plan, it would be a good idea to determine what aspect of pronunciation you want to deal with, determine your objective(s), and decide what the theme for the class will be.  If we were not following the PPP model, we could be open to doing things differently, and that might be fine too.  However, it is still generally a very good idea to be clear on your objectives, no matter what model or approach you are considering.

NOTE:  There is a website that allows you to type out those symbols (and it’s good for languages other than English):   https://ipa.typeit.org/

This is another good site because it gives you many examples.  Keep in mind it’s in the British RP Pronunciation dialect. https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/phoneticsymbolsforenglish.htm

This site is basically the same as the previous one but has the American accent in mind:
https://koreatesol.org/sites/default/files/EClinic-%20Phonetic%20Symbols.pdf

This information will be repeated and placed in A Few Thoughts so it will be easy for you to copy and paste the links.
As you probably already know, there isn’t only one British accent or one American accent, but it has been decided that these versions are to be used as a standard reference.

In choosing the input one would more frequently select something with a dialogue to capture ‘more natural’ patterns but pronunciation is basically an element of all forms of speaking, be they speeches or monologues, chanting, poetry reading, somebody talking to him or herself, speaking in different situations which involve different kinds of interactions and levels of formality, different accents and regional tendencies, and so on.  For fun we looked at ‘a song’; the same theoretical song which could be used for the low level class in LP6.  Of course you could use a different, more difficult song, or focus on the lyrics and/or grammar.  Some suggestions for that have already been given elsewhere in this presentation of the PPP model.

This lesson plan is a longer than the others because it is dealing with an area that many teachers feel reluctant to touch.  In my early years of teaching, I also wasn’t sure what to do with it, but now connected speech has become one of my favourite aspects of teaching.  It just takes some time to get familiar with what is involved, and some experimenting.  But it can be approached in a fun way and an interesting way.  When you first start out in your explorations, I recommend you limit them to just one or a few aspects.  Then when you feel more confident with those, add one or two more to your repertoire.

Another recommendation:  Sometimes you are teaching something new and there might be a lot of details that you feel important to include.  It depends a little too on how well you improvise, how well you remember and how nervous you get when in front of people.  If the subject matter is fairly new then you could do several things.  One thing is to go over the plan several times in your mind so you feel better prepared.  You could also have a more personalized lesson plan with a general outline telling you the major steps and an occasional prompt for something you may need reminding of.  Accompanying that general outline could be some kind of prompt or a more detailed description just for that section.  In the case of the Presentation, for example, you might want to have a separate paper with the phonemic script examples and symbols that you want to use.

And of course it is often a good idea to spread out complicated elements over several classes.  Focus on one or two ideas in one class so the students get familiar with using them.  Then build onto that in the following class.  You could do a review, maybe some further practice, and then add the next element or layer.

One last point.  Much depends on your objectives.  It’s good to keep in mind what you want to achieve and how you are considering going about it.  Using the PPP or the PWP model may not be the most advantageous option for a song, but it does depend on what you intend on doing.  Feel free to approach your goals in a variety of ways and decide on those that you feel have the benefits you are looking for.

Imagine your students at an intermediate or upper intermediate level and you want to get them speaking in a richer manner, such as justifying their statements, giving examples, responding more to what other people are saying.  You think that it might be a good idea to teach them expressions that would be useful while engaging in a discussion or even an argument with someone.  And that idea evolves into deciding you want your students to have a debate.  The challenge is how can this all be translated into a strong lesson plan using the PPP model?

NOTE:  Functional language is the language used that surrounds a particular situation which involves doing some task.  For example:  ●giving directions;  ●speaking on the phone;  ●apologizing.  Frequently the target language is the use of expressions typical for those situations, but it can also involve some grammar.  In giving directions we do use some set phrases such as ‘go straight’, ‘turn left’, ‘you can’t miss it’, but we also use imperatives.  Functional language is often the theme for a chapter or part of a unit in a student book so after going through it, the students are more capable of functioning in that situation.

Remember that the PPP model is best designed for a language focus, not directly on skills development.  There is some skills work done in the Input stage where reading or listening does play a part, and speaking is encouraged throughout the lesson.  Speaking or writing is also part of the objective and the Production stage, but it is not the language focus.  Normally the language focus is grammar or vocabulary and functional language can work very nicely into this model.

Therefore, if you want your students to engage in a debate, that is fine, and if you approach it using the PPP model, you have to include some language focus.  Because engaging in a debate can be viewed as a function or a situation which often uses particular kinds of language, our target language could be one or more groups of expressions that would be useful in carrying out that speaking activity.  Just like giving directions or speaking on the phone, you could come up with some expressions that would be useful for the students to learn.  While having debates may not be situations taking place as frequently as giving directions or speaking on the phone, you could focus on expressions that could also be transferable to other useful situations like having arguments, discussions, or even exchanges of opinions in conversations.  There are two suggested areas of functional language for you to teach your students.
1- agreeing & disagreeing    (ex:  I agree with you up to a point.  You’ll have to come up with a few more examples to teach.)
2- introducing & emphasizing points   (This isn’t immediately clear to many teachers so a list is provided here.  These are ways to start the sentence you want to communicate that places some emphasis on it.  If you wish to make some changes to the list, that would be fine.)
     ●It cannot be denied that…
●What I think is…
●What I don’t understand is why (people think that) …
●One thing to consider is …
●I want to point out that …
●What I want to point out is ….

Complete the lesson plan by addressing each of the sections (context, input gist task, etc – introduction is optional).  It is not necessary to find any materials to use (listenings or articles, worksheets, etc), nor write out a lot of detailed ideas (unless you want to).  Simply sketch out how you would interpret each section.  In this case, because the target language consists of two different sets of expressions, think of how you are going to approach that.  Perhaps you would prefer each has their own Presentation and sets of Practice activities, for example.

Part of the challenge is dealing with two separate themes of functional language.  That is something you will have to make decisions on.  If you prefer something simpler, choose one of the two themes and develop your lesson plan around that.  Also, the suggestion is to have a debate for the Production activity.  It is also a possibility to change that into a discussion or a conversation of some kind, but consider the challenge of preparing your students to engage in a debate.  How would you set it up and get them acquainted with its structure?

Now that you’ve done it, check yours with the version provided.  Remember that the following provided version is not the perfect standard to gauge yours by.  It is simply one version.  With the image and feel of the class you imagined, your lesson plan could be much more appropriate than the one offered here.  But do check it out after you have done yours, partly for curiosity’s sake, and partly to see if you can find some ideas that might complement yours, or stimulate other ideas for you.

There was a fair amount of detail and attention given to the debate activities in the Practice and the Production stages.  Reflect a little on why they were handled differently.  Another area of reflection is to consider having ‘dress rehearsals’ as an option for a final Practice activity.  What benefits are there to doing that, and what other factors might have to be considered (such as motivation, changes to be made, repetition, etc)?  And one last piece for food for thought.  A debate is a little complicated, but sometimes we teachers present complicated ideas, such as the structure for giving presentations, doing simulations or special kinds of role-plays / theater, playing some kinds of games, going over how exams are structured and evaluated, etc.  It’s good to take on the challenge of how to communicate something that involves much structure to students.  The teacher can play with how to approach it, like breaking it up into smaller components and deal with them over several different classes, for example.  All this has to be planned for and thought through as it takes shape in our lesson plans and attempts to meet certain objectives.  Once the structure is learned, we can more easily return to it when it can serve our purpose such as providing direction for how students can work on certain elements.