When I was training for the RSA Dip (currently the DELTA Diploma), the most useful lesson, the one that fundamentally changed the way that I had taught up to that point was ‘lesson planning’. Lesson planning gives direction and ultimately makes lessons more productive, interesting and professional.

What follows are a number of exercises which will help you see what you know about lesson planning. Tip: to make things easier, print this post out.

1. First of all, we’ll look at what constitutes a lesson plan and we’ll do this with an ‘odd man out’ type of exercise (answers below at the end this post). Which of the following are not one of the factors which constitute a lesson plan.

a. timing
b. teaching aids
c. procedure/activities
d. interaction [teacher-students, student(s) – student(s)]
e. vocabulary review
f. aim

If you choose ‘aim’ as one of those to leave out, you’re wrong. Having an aim is one of the most basic elements of a successful lesson. The question is though, which aim?

2. The following are 3 possible aims for an elementary class, only one of which is worth its salt. Choose the right one and explain in a short phrase why the other two are not valid.

a. to teach prepositions
b. to introduce the present perfect simple
c. to do communication activities

OK, now let’s have a look at what we actually do in the classroom when we have a lesson plan and we’ll look at the order of things. The following are the different activities which constitute a lesson but the order is all mixed up.

3. Put the activities in the correct order. On a peice of paper, label each blank ‘A though H’. (Note: the lesson is an introductory lesson for an advanced class):

____ Show students a picture of your favourite food

____ Put students in pairs and try to find out which 5 things they have in common

____ Write the following headings on the board, TASTE, SMELL, TEXTURE, TEMPERATURE and write the following words in random order below: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy, rich, fresh appetizing, creamy crunchy, soggy, chewy, heavy, light, cool, chilled warm, luke-warm. Then ask students, in pairs, to put the adjectives under the correct headings:

____ Food Game: divide the class into two teams. The teacher calls one member of each team to the front and shows them a card with a name of a meal or food. The students must give a one word clue to elicit the name of the meal or food. The teacher nominates a leader for each team who will decide which response will be offered.

____ Students talk in pairs about their favourite food referring to the board as a vocabulary resource.

____ Students report about common characteristics to the class as a whole.

____ Students talk in pairs about what they would suggest to foreign visitor interested in local cuisine/ eating habits refer to restaurants, breakfast, snacks, bars, dinner, lunch.

____ Put students in pairs and try to find out which 5 things they have in common.

4. Once you have done #3 above, then give timing for each of the activities (i.e.: 10 minutes).

5. The next step is to find the possible problems so match the following problems with the activities above. Use the letters you assigned the tasks in #3. Not all tasks match with an item below.

____ Students may have a problem with the vocabulary items and the teacher may have a problem explaining them in English. Consequently the activity may drag and take up most of the class time.

____ Students may have little or no common ground and the activity may fail.

____ Students may have difficulty understanding the rules and give a number of answers when only one can be accepted.

____ Students may have little to say because they don’t go out much and know little about food preparation.

____ The activity may end very quickly because students may have little to say and not wish to refer to the board to give extension to their responses.

6. What possible problems can you find with the activities you have not matched?

7. How would you solve these problems?

Now, one last activity for you is to find a justification for the activities:

8. What is the desired result of each individual activity and what are the overall aims of this lesson?

In my next post, part 2 of this article, I’ll talk about how to choose, create and modify activities. By the way, this lesson included choice, modification and creation. I adapted the lesson plan from the following text: Proficiency Insight by Nick Kenny, Macmillan Heinemann, 1999). Here are the ‘suggested’ answers to the tasks above.

ANSWERS to the tasks above:

1) e
2) b, the other two are far too general and don’t assist in producing the appropriate activities
3) b, h, f, a, c, e, g, d
4) b [3-5 min.], h [3-5 min.], f [7-10 min.], a [2-3 min.], c [5-7 min.], e [5 min.] g [7-10 min.], d [10 min.]
5) (a) C (b) H (c) D (d) G (e) E
6) b- very limited responses, activity may end quickly and be unproductive. f- again, if the previous activity (h) didn’t work there would be little to report
7-9) Work these out for yourself and let us know below by commenting. You’ll find my suggested answers in the next post.

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