TEFL San Luis Obispo California

Lesson Planning (41). Lesson planning is a very important part of teaching. Not only does it give the teacher an outline of what the class will be about, but it also serves as a record of what happened in the class. There are two parts to a lesson plan, the basic information, at the top, and the procedure part, at the bottom. The procedure part can be broken into three phase; Engage, Study, and Activate (ESA). There are different ways a lesson plan can be made. They can be either formal or informal. Informal lesson plans could be as simple as a scrap piece of paper with some notes written down on them. The formal lesson plan would be more structured and can be very detailed. The formal lesson plan would include basic information including; the size of the class, learner objectives, personal objectives, anticipated problems and solutions. (Lesson Plan Template) I would prefer the formal lesson plan to the informal plan as they can be easily organized; and after the class, notes can be made on what worked and what did not work. This will help improve later classes and keep the students interested. Keeping the students interested in and excited about the class can be a difficult task for a teacher. Having a strong ‘engage' phase of a lesson is important. The engage phase is to pique the interest of the students; get them warmed up and ready for english. Ideally there would be a nice transition from the ‘engage' phase to the ‘study' or ‘activate' phase, but is not really needed. A good ‘engage' phase will help set the tone and make the student's ready to learn something new. If the students begin to lose interest during a class, you might start to include a second engage phase. Learning something new is the idea of having the class in the first place. The study phase is where the teacher presents new information to the students. It can include lectures, tests or quizzes, and exercises. The students are taught vocabulary, read excerpts, and answer questions. This is also the part in which corrections are made. There can be one or several study phases in a lesson plan. If the subject is a difficult one, take it slow and present the information in smaller parts. This is why there may be more than one study phase in a lesson plan. Once the new material is presented to the students, they have to practice the new material. This ‘practice' phase is also known as the ‘activate' phase. The activate phase is one where the students have an activity from role-play to surveys to team work. The sky is the limit and the more creative this phase is, the more interesting it can be for both the students and the teachers. This allows the students to practice what they just learned. At the end of this stage there should be a quick review of the activate phase. The activate stage can come after the engage phase and/or after a study phase. For this reason there may be more than one activate phase. Classes are normally ended in an activate phase. Formal lesson plans give a lot of information needed to a teacher for teaching a class. They can be used in a number of ways including as a personal outline for a class, an outline for a substitute teacher, a record of the class, and a way to modify future classes. The important thing is to keep them organic and change them as the class needs change. A teacher also needs to remember that you can organize the phases to suit the subject at hand. You can even have multiples of each of the phases depending on the class. i.e. 2 engage, 2 study or even 2 activate. Lessons can carry over from one class to the next, especially on a difficult subject. So try to keep it entertaining and keep a record of what worked and what does not, through the use of lesson plans.