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Lesson planning Learning to correctly plan a lesson is one of the most useful tools when teaching english as a foreign language for the first time. As a new teacher their will already be difficulties to face, nervousness, lack of confidence and the struggle in communication. Planning the lesson is a way to walk into the room with confidence and know that at the end of the class if you have correctly followed the lesson plan you will have efficiently and successfully used the time to teach your students. There are many steps to take and to consider when creating your lesson plan firstly what do you expect your students to achieve and how are you able to make that possible, lesson planning helps you think logically through the stages and lets you see from a bird like point of view your class and the time you have to do each stage in. When teaching the class time management is important while it can be easy to find activities for the class to do if you have extra time it is not ideal to be teaching a class and have to end it abruptly. What you plan for is a class where you teach a topic and have the opportunity to make sure the students have learnt what you set out to teach. The TEFL course teaches three styles of lesson plans, ESA ( Engage, Study, Activate) Patchwork and Boomerang (both variations of ESA). The engage stage focus's on grabbing the class's attention , getting them warmed up, interested and ready to focus on the class ahead. The Study stage is where the topic you are teaching is introduced and taught to the class, usually followed by an activity that will show the teacher that the student's are understanding and if not then taking the time to go over any areas of difficulty and give feedback. The activate stage enables them to put into practise what they learnt in the study stage, making sure not to introduce any new information but once again a good opportunity for the teacher to see everyone is understanding. Simply the Straight arrow plan is E S A, the patchwork is E, A, A, S, A, E, S, A and the Boomerang is E A S A. Flexibility as an english teacher is important, using different ESA lesson formats can provide this while still working within lesson aims and objectives. When teaching a class it is easy to stray from the topic, one question can have you going of in a different direction than planned but being able to refer to the lesson plan helps to get back on track and stay on target. some people disagree in lesson planning and believe that the teacher becomes less flexible and tends to dominate the room and this can be true so it is also important to go with the flow of the class, if they are interested in a topic go with it, if they are enjoying an activity let them spend a few more minutes on it and postpone the next activity to a later lesson. As you teach more lessons you will be able to use your own judgement and the majority of people find themselves using a lesson plan as a loose guide.
