CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
1. FRONT PAGE
Main Aim
The main aim is the most important part of your lesson plan. This is what you
want your students to be able to do – or do better – by the end of the lesson
that they couldn’t do – or do as well – at the beginning. Think of your lesson in
terms of you, the teacher, taking your students on a journey. Your main aim is
your destination and once you’ve decided where to go, the journey is much
easier to plan. Express your main aims in terms of student outcomes not teacher
actions. Give a context for your lesson. This will help you see that you maintain
a flow over the lesson as a whole and that all activities and tasks relate to the
context.
Examples of main aims
• to highlight and practise the structure ‘used to + base form’ in the
context of childhood memories
• to enable students to understand and use the following lexical items
related to sport: (then list the lexical items you intend them to learn)
• to introduce and practise functional exponents for giving advice, e.g.
‘You should …,’ ‘If I were you, I’d …’
• to check and extend students’ understanding of narrative tenses and to
enable ss to use these in the context of a disastrous holiday
• to develop students skills of listening for gist and detail in the context of
an interview with a famous person
• to enable students to write a letter to a friend using linkers for addition
and contrast, e.g. ‘What’s more’, ‘although’, ‘whereas’…
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
Subsidiary Aims
As well as your main aim, you should also have some subsidiary aims. These are
aims that are not the main focus of the lesson, but that you hope will be
achieved along the way on your journey to your main aim.
Examples of subsidiary aims
• to enable students to understand vocabulary items related to travel (if,
for example, you are pre-teaching them for a reading text)
• to develop students’ writing skills (if, for example, the writing is practice
of a language point)
• to improve students’ awareness of intonation (if, for example, you’re
teaching some functional language where polite intonation is important)
NB: Your subsidiary aims will support the main aims – so you might have some
vocabulary that will help the learners read or listen better or useful language and
phrases that will help them speak or write better, or you might have some
speaking or writing through which the students will practise the main language
aim.
Personal Aims
These are the aims that relate to you as a teacher, rather than the lesson itself.
They should be informed by the action points for your previous lesson in order to
help you focus on your own personal development.
They could include such things as:
• to sit down more
• to avoid talking too much and reduce teacher talk time (TTT)
• to give clearer instructions
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
• to monitor more effectively
• to improve pace and flow of the lesson
Assumptions
These are the things relating to your lesson that you feel you can safely assume
students will know, for example:
• the students will be familiar with the past participles of the verbs used in
the lesson
• the students will be familiar with the present simple active (if, for example,
you’re teaching present simple passive)
• the students will have a basic knowledge of the political systems in their
countries
Materials / Resources
These are the things you need in the lesson – visuals, tape, map, handouts,
dictionaries, etc. Listing them on the front page of your plan will help you make
sure you’ve got everything ready. It is also an important guide for anyone
observing or teaching your lesson. Refer to any page/exercise numbers if using
material from books (and remember to source published material on all
handouts). If you have designed a task/handout yourself, you can source this as
‘teacher made’ or ‘own material’.
Timetable Fit
In this section, you need to state what the focus of the previous lesson was, and
what the focus of the next lesson will be (even if it is on a different day). It will
highlight how your lesson fits into the timetable for these students. You may be
continuing with a particular topic or delivering a stand-alone lesson, it doesn’t
matter.
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
Anticipated Problems and Solutions
This is the section that you probably need to spend the most time thinking
about. You need to consider what problems may occur on your journey and how
you will deal with them. These are problems that the students might have, not
you!
Think about issues with classroom management, individual students, skills work
and timing.
Eg.
➢ odd number of students
➢ students who don’t get on with each other
➢ students who don’t like to move
➢ what to do if the lesson takes longer/shorter than you expected
➢ technical problems
A Skills Focus Lesson
Anticipating problems in a skills focus lesson obviously depends on the skill you
are working on. For receptive skills (reading and listening) you need to consider
vocabulary problems, the content of the text, the degree of difficulty, your
students’ different abilities, the length of the text, any cultural problems the
text/topic might produce, etc. For productive skills (speaking and writing) you will
need to consider whether they’ll be interested in the topic, problems with
grouping your topic, whether the students will have enough ideas to contribute
etc.
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
2. ANALYSIS
For each lesson that you teach you need to provide an analysis page for any language
that will be covered in the lesson.
Identifying between Meaning, Pronunciation and Form
Which of the following relate to (a) meaning, (b) pronunciation or (c) form in the
context of a lesson on weather vocabulary?
a) Confusion between spelling of ‘weather’ as opposed to ‘whether’
b) Difficulty saying the ‘ch’ in ‘chilly’
c) Differing strengths of ‘warm’, ‘hot’, ‘humid’, ‘scorching’
d) The change from ‘y’ to ‘i’ when ‘sunny’ becomes ‘sunnier’
e) The negative connotation of ‘stuffy’ in the context of a crowded tube
f) ‘seasons’ /si:znz/
Anticipated Problems and Solutions
Anticipated problems in a language focus lesson can be problems of meaning,
form, pronunciation and possibly appropriacy (although remember that not every
language point necessarily causes all these problems for your students). This
section needs to be done in some detail. For example, ‘they’ll have problems with
form’ isn’t enough! You need to say what problems they’ll have with form, such
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
as problems with the question form, infinitive with or without ‘to’, word order,
spelling, third person ‘s’ etc.
Once you have thought about the problems, you need to decide on practical
solutions to deal with them. Again, be a specific as possible.
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
3. PROCEDURE
Your plan will consist of a PROCEDURE PAGE, in which you will detail each stage
of the lesson. Here you will give a name for each stage, and say what the AIM of
the stage is.
Stages
Each lesson needs to be broken down into stages. You can have as many stages
as you like, depending on your lesson.
Examples of stages
lead-in pre-teach vocabulary preparation stage
controlled practice role play / freer practice boardwork stage
feedback first/second listening delayed correction
drilling language focus (clarification or presentation) stage
Stage Aims
Each stage must have an aim – a reason why you’re doing this in class. What’s
more, this stage aim must in some way help students to achieve the main aim.
Examples of stage aims
to generate interest in the topic
to give students a written record
to present the question form and short answer
to provide controlled oral practice of the new vocabulary
to practise listening for gist
to provide students with a written record of the language
to provide free speaking practice
to allow students to check their answers
to establish answers as a whole class
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
Stages and Stage Aims
Match the stages on the left with the stage aims on the right:
1. lead-in a) to provide students with a written record
2. pre-teach vocabulary b) to provide students with controlled oral practice of (the target
language or part of it)
3. presentation stage c) to practise listening for gist
4. drilling d) to allow students to check the answers
5. controlled practice e) to provide students with feedback on errors made in the freer
speaking activity
6. role play f) to provide students with controlled written practice of (the
target language or part of it)
7. boardwork stage g) to remove barriers to students’ understanding of the text
8. feedback h) to focus students on (the target language or part of it) and to
clarify meaning, form and pronunciation
9. first listening i) to provide students with freer oral practice of (the
target language or part of it)
10. delayed error correction j) to generate interest in the topic of…
TIP: Never do something if you don’t know why you are doing it!
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
Procedure
For each stage aim, you need to decide how you are going to achieve this aim;
this is your procedure. Your procedure says exactly what you are going to do in
the class in as much detail as possible. Imagine that someone else is teaching
your lesson for you and you need to tell them exactly what they need to do –
this is a good indication of the detail you need to provide. You don’t need to
write every single word you are going to say, although you it might be useful to
script your instructions, particularly at low levels.
Things you need to consider putting in your procedure are:
• key questions to generate interest
• key questions and prompts for elicitation
• model sentences
• concept question (questions to check if students understand meaning of
new language)
• instructions (particularly at lower levels)
• how you are going to highlight form and pronunciation on the board
• what you are going to drill
• any vocabulary you’re planning to pre-teach in a skills lesson
• how exactly you are going to conduct feedback (e.g. will you nominate sts
or as the whole class, will you get them to the board, or will you write up
the answer, will you ask every student for their response or just select a
few, etc…
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
Timing
You also need to estimate the time you think each stage will take. Try to be
realistic here – very few stages take two minutes! This will help you time your
lesson as a whole and ensure that you reach the later stages in the lesson.
Remember, these may be crucial to you achieving your main aim. Remember
also to allow time for setting up activities – giving and checking instructions,
demos, regrouping, etc. – and for taking feedback after tasks.
Interaction
Finally, think about the interaction at each stage. This will help you think about
what the students are doing at each stage and ensure that you achieve a variety
of interaction during the lesson. You can use symbols to indicate this:
T - Ss (open class, teacher-led stage)
Ss-T (open class, but student led stage)
S (students work individually)
S-S (pair work)
Ss-Ss (students work in groups of 3 or more)
CELTA – International Training Institute
Lesson Planning
Checking your plan
When you’ve finished your plan, check the following:
Is there a variety of interaction? If there are too many teacher-led stages the
lesson is likely to be too teacher-centred and students will not have sufficient
time to practice.
Is your plan logical and does each stage follow on from the previous one? Look
at your plan backwards. Do the students have the necessary language or
information to be able to do the final activity?
Overall, if you have a good idea of WHAT (the stage) you are doing, WHY (the
stage aim) you are doing it, and HOW (the procedure) you will do it, then you
are likely to be more successful!
Final Tips:
• Do the tasks yourself!! This will help you understand better what
information and instructions the students needs to be able to complete it.
It will show you how easy or difficult it is and give you an indication of
how much time they need. If it takes you 3 mins, your students will
probably need about 6 mins!
• Plan your lesson first, and then produce the materials.
• If unsure, ASK YOUR TUTOR!
