A key aspect of effective teaching is having a plan for what will happen in the classroom each day. Creating such a plan involves setting realistic goals, deciding how to incorporate course textbooks and other required materials, and developing activities that will promote learning. In what follows an attempt is made at showing instructors how to carry out each of these steps.

Before working through these different steps, beginning instructors may want to have a look at some Survival Tips for New Teachers.

Be Prepared: Survival Tips for New Teachers

Effective teaching depends on preparation. Here are eight things to do at the beginning of the first term to help yourself have a rewarding and enjoyable teaching experience.

1. Content: Find out what you are expected to teach and what materials you are expected to use. Review the curriculum or textbook to get a roadmap of the term (and ultimately of the whole academic year) as a whole. Working through the curriculum should be a process of discovery for the students, but not for the instructor. (see S2-5)

2. Method: Find out what teaching approach you are expected to use. Are you expected to stick closely to the textbook, or to bring in outside materials to supplement? Is your teaching practice expected to be more learner centered or more teacher centered? Are you expected to teach grammar overtly, or just explain it as it comes up in various contexts? (See introduction of the 7^th form syllabus + "Programmes of English")

3. Students: Find out what level your students will be. If they are “second year” or “intermediate,” ask what that means. What have they studied previously? What materials have they used? What are their learning styles? This will let you know what to expect from them. (See S 6-9)

4. Plan: Outline a plan for the term/academic year, even if the textbook has offered you a plan. Know when and how you will introduce new material and when and how you will review. What will you do when you get behind? It always happens.

5. Orientation: Find out what facilities are available for students and where they are: language lab (if any), computer lab, library. Make a reference card for yourself with the hours when those facilities are open. Then, when students ask, you will be able to inform them about what they need.

6. Relationships: Learn the names of your students as soon as you can. Use their names when talking with them and when giving language examples in class. Attending to your students as individuals will help you assess their progress more effectively. Also, if students believe that you care about them, they will care about you (_{Smart tip: Ask students to bring cards on which they write their names}).

7. Expectations: Ask how much and what kind of homework is usually given to students at the level you are teaching. Find out what expectations authorities (ministry + inspector) have for frequency and type of testing. Let your students know what the expectations are in these areas. (See "Introduction" for 7^th form syllabus + "Programmes of English")

8. Guidance: Ask your inspector/pedagogical counsellor or another experienced instructor to serve as your mentor. A mentor can review your plan for the term before classes start to be sure you’re on the right track, and can meet with you on a regular basis throughout the academic year to answer questions and give you support when you need it. Having a mentor is especially important toward the end of the first term of teaching, when many teachers begin to feel overwhelmed, discouraged, or frustrated.

The Pre-planning Stage

A teacher needs to consider different fundamental factors before embarking on preparing a lesson plan. These may include the students' current language level, their previous learning (see S6-9), their motivation (with regard to the subject), and their learning styles. A teacher also needs to have a knowledge of the content and organization of the syllabus and of the language curriculum along with exams specifications (number of exams per level, timing, duration, exam content, grading, etc) [See S10].

Having equipped him/herself with that type of knowledge, a teacher can now move to center his/her attention on the planning process (See S11).

Planning a lesson

Different teachers may come with lesson plans of different forms, but what counts most are the ideas they put into these plans. A teacher's main job is to have a clear idea as to what s/he expects his/her students to be able to achieve at the end of the lesson, and how to make that happen.

There are other possible roles for lesson plans:

(a) they serve as a record-keeping tool for the teacher (mentioning what went on during a given lesson)

(b) they serve as reminders – they indicate to the teacher what s/he is supposed to do, the materials needed, the activities (type – number – timing – duration).

The planning stage includes four main focus areas:

(a) the activities in which the students will be involved – what they will be doing and how they should be grouped,

(b) the language skills to be focused upon – including potential sub-skills. These should be consistent with the content of the lesson and with the classroom activities,

(d) and content which is motivating and interesting for the students (one can – if necessary – change the content of a lesson to meet the students' needs, expectations and preferences) – a teacher knows which topics will work and which won't.

Developing a plan

Below are some of the main elements of a lesson plan:

1. Class description and timetable fit: here you should mention (a) who the students are: their class (or group), their number, their level; (b) the room number; (c) where the lesson fits in the timetable: the timing + the date; and (d) its position in a sequence of previous and following lessons.

2. Lesson aims: aims should be specific and should refer to an outcome which can be measured afterwards. Aims should be constructed around what we hope our students to be able to do by the end of the lesson (not what a teacher will be doing).

3. Activities, procedures and timing: this part may encompass up to two-thirds of the lesson plan space; it lists the activities and the procedures in a given lesson along with the expected duration for each activity. In addition to that, this part presents the teaching aids to be used, and includes the types of interaction that will take place during each stage in the lesson. (See S 12-13)

Structure of the Lesson

A language lesson should include a variety of activities that combine different types of language input and output. Learners at all proficiency levels benefit from such variety; research has shown that it is more motivating and is more likely to result in effective language learning.

An effective lesson has five parts:

Preparation
Presentation
Practice
Evaluation
Expansion

The five parts of a lesson may all take place in one class session or may extend over multiple sessions, depending on the nature of the topic and the activities.

The lesson plan should outline who will do what in each part of the lesson. The time allotted for preparation, presentation, and evaluation activities should be no more than 8-10 minutes each. Communication practice activities may run a little longer.

1. Preparation

As the class begins, give students a broad outline of the day’s goals and activities so they know what to expect. Help them focus by eliciting their existing knowledge of the day’s topics.

· Use discussion or homework review to elicit knowledge related to the grammar and language use points to be covered

· Use comparison with the native language to elicit strategies that students may already be using

· Use discussion of what students do and/or like to do to elicit their knowledge of the topic they will address in communication activities

2. Presentation/Modeling

Move from preparation into presentation of the linguistic and topical content of the lesson and relevant learning strategies. Present the strategy first if it will help students absorb the lesson content.

Presentation provides the language input that gives students the foundation for their knowledge of the language. Input comes from the instructor and from course textbooks. To increase the amount of input that students receive in the target language, instructors should use it as much as possible for all classroom communication purposes.

An important part of the presentation is structured output, in which students practice the form that the instructor has presented. In structured output, accuracy of performance is important. Structured output is designed to make learners comfortable producing specific language items recently introduced.

Structured output is a type of communication that is found only in language classrooms. Because production is limited to pre-selected items, structured output is not truly communicative.

3. Practice

In this part of the lesson, the focus shifts from the instructor as presenter to the students as completers of a designated task. Students work in pairs or small groups on a topic-based task with a specific outcome. Completion of the task may require the bridging of an information gap. The instructor observes the groups and acts as a resource when students have questions that they cannot resolve themselves.

In their work together, students move from structured output to communicative output, in which the main purpose is to complete the communication task. Language becomes a tool, rather than an end in itself. Learners have to use any or all of the language that they know. The criterion of success is whether the learner gets the message across. Accuracy is not a consideration unless the lack of it interferes with the message.

Activities for the practice segment of the lesson may come from a textbook or be designed by the instructor. See the sub-section on Identify Materials and Activities below for guidelines on developing tasks that use authentic materials and activities.

4. Evaluation

When all students have completed the communication practice task, reassemble the class as a group to recap the lesson. Ask students to give examples of how they used the linguistic content and learning or communication strategies to carry out the communication task.

Evaluation is useful for four reasons:

It reinforces the material that was presented earlier in the lesson
It provides an opportunity for students to raise questions of usage and style
It enables the instructor to monitor individual student comprehension and learning
It provides closure to the lesson

5. Expansion

Expansion activities allow students to apply the knowledge they have gained in the classroom to situations outside it. Expansion activities include out-of-class observation assignments, in which the instructor asks students to find examples of something and then report back.