Writing Effective ESL Lesson Plans

[English Language Professors]

ESL Lesson Plans - David Silver
A well-prepared ESL lesson plan is the key to a successful ESL lesson
helping teachers organize the aim and various components making up the
lesson.

Writing an effective ESL lesson plan doesn't have to be an exercise in
frustration and wasted time. It can be surprisingly simple to plan
lessons effectively by following certain guidelines.

Why Write Lesson Plans?
A lesson plan, no matter how informal, gives a lesson shape and a
framework to build on. Some experienced teachers have an ability to
think on their feet but most teachers need to plan lessons to think
about where they are going with a particular lesson, to think about
ideas for future lessons and to remember what it was they intended to
do in the first place.

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A lesson plan shows students that their teacher has spent time
thinking about them as well as showing professionalism and commitment.
That said, even a well-prepared lesson plan can bomb and teachers may
need to digress from their plan sometimes. If that happens, a note
should be made of why a particular lesson didn't work out so that
changes can be applied to future lesson plans.

What Should be in a Lesson Plan?
A detailed lesson plan must highlight who is going to be taught, what
they are going to learn, how they are going to learn and any materials
that will be used during the lesson in the following way:

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Students' details: this includes students' names, ages and gender as
well as class size and any prior comments on attitude from former
teachers.
An objective: the aim of the lesson could be to study a certain part
of grammar, write a narrative, listen to an interview or read a text.
The method: the method will tell exactly how the teacher and students
are going to achieve their aim. Will they work in pairs? Will the
class begin by listening to a tape? Will there be a discussion on a
certain topic?
Materials: Teachers can list materials they will use during their
lesson or jot down the name of a book or the address of an internet
site they used to plan the lesson.
Problems: a few lines can be left blank for a post-lesson comment on
problems that arose or why an activity or game didn't work.
An effective lesson plan must state a logical sequence of classroom
events from the beginning of the lesson to the stated objective. A
very detailed lesson plan can show an estimate of how long each task
will take and what material will be used for each task. New teachers
benefit from detailed lesson plans as they may not have found their
teaching style yet or feel at ease in a classroom for a while.

Lesson Planning and Lesson Components
Effective lesson planning helps teachers combine lesson components to
present an interesting and varied lesson. Lessons that use one kind of
activity over and over again do not motivate students and can lead to
boredom resulting in classroom discipline problems, especially when
teaching children.

Planning lessons helps introduce different ways of varying a lesson
programme or writing a syllabus for the ESL classroom by changing the
tempo, the way students work, focusing on different skills, upping or
lowering the level of difficulty or by changing the mood of the lesson
from studious to fun and entertaining.