Unit 4 Lesson Planning Module 2 Lesson Stages and Plans

At the end of this module you will:a) understand the importance of adequate planning over a series of lessons b) understand the importance of planning stages and activities within a lesson c) d) be aware of teacher and student roles at each stage be able to write a detailed lesson plan

e) have considered ways to become a reflective teacher in your future career

This is the final module of the course and you will be asked to submit a lesson plan for a full lesson - it will be time to show off what you have learnt. If you have been doing the course slowly you may find yourself leafing back through earlier modules to remind yourself of their content and relevance to lesson planning. In any case, your mind should be making links between all you have learnt as you work through these final sections. Your second task in this section is related to teacher development and how learning continues after you finish the course. To misquote Whitney Houston: Learning to assess yourself is the greatest assessment of all.

PART 1 LESSON PLANNING

LESSON PLANS AND HOLIDAYS Lesson plans and lesson planning worry teachers a lot. Some even have lesson planning dreams, where they leave their plan on the bus or it flies out of the window.. But lesson planning is not as scary as it seems. Think for a moment about going on holiday. When we are about to go on holiday here are some questions we ask ourselves: How long do I have? Where is my holiday going to be and what do I want to do when I get there? How am I going to travel around and what do I need to take? Can you see already how a holiday is like a course of lessons? Then, having made a plan, when we arrive in the place we have chosen for our holiday we find: That something is more interesting than we thought or not as interesting That we cannot get somewhere because there is no transport That the weather is better or worse than we had expected. But if we plan well and have a guidebook, we are able to make changes without panicking or getting confused.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 1 Which parts of a holiday are like which parts of lesson planning?

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Write the lesson planning point next to the holiday point it resembles. Holiday Something is more interesting than we thought or not as interesting We cannot get somewhere because there is no transport How am I going to get around and what do I need to take? That the weather is better or . worse than we had expected so we do different things. Where is the holiday going to be and what do I want to do when I get there? How long do I have? 1. Sometimes you cannot do what you planned to do because of equipment problems. 2. Timing of the course and each lesson. 3. Questions about planning language and materials. 4. Questions about long term planning of overall aims. 5. Students can be unpredictable so we have to be able to adapt. There are different kinds of lesson planning to take into consideration: LONG TERM PLANNING (OVER A TERM OR YEAR) Study the book you are using and check that you have the basic materials that you need and if materials are already prepared. Find out the aims of your school for this level of student Lesson Day to day changes in plans can be made depending on students interests

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Are you supposed to concentrate on speaking more than reading? Is there a special exam? Think about timing - how long do you have? (including missed lessons for holidays, etc.) Divide your course up into sections in some way and give a period of time to each one. This often goes with course book chapters. Try to stick to it and not race ahead or get behind. Units 1 and 2 The future Units 3 and 4 Past tenses and storytelling Units 5 and 6 Likes and dislikes Units 7 and 8 Descriptions PLANNING WITHIN A SECTION OF WORK Sections of work are sometimes called Schemes of Work or Units. There are a number of aims for a Unit of work and these may be in your course book, so read it! Some teachers just pick up the book and go on from where they left off last lesson without thinking about the overall plan for the section. Heres why that is not a good idea: Its boring for you and the students. Pages in the text book do not fit exactly into lessons and you will often have unfinished exercises. The lessons may not have interesting and personalised materials to make links with real life. Students do not understand why they are studying certain things - just its in the book.

A spidergram could help you understand what is going on in a unit. Make one together when your class starts a new topic. Heres one on sport:

1.Speaking: Pair presentations on a famous sports person 7.Project work: 6.Listening: Interviews or sport Preparing note taking, Powerpoint. ? presentation, wall being a good listener displays
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2.Reading and grammar: Magazine biographies 3.Writing: Report on a sport clear info and use of bullet points
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5.Grammar: Commands and rules. Have to, must. Present perfect tense.

4.Vocabulary: Sports and equipment, food and health

Remember also to consult the beginning of your course book. You often find a double page spread with a clear idea of what is going on in each unit. And there should be a teachers book to go with your course to give you more help and advice. DAY TO DAY LESSON PLANNING. You also need a plan for each day. Concentrate on having clear aims for every lesson. Write them at the top of your lesson notes. Write some of them on the board, introduce them at the beginning of the lesson. Aims for a lesson can be all sorts of things:

There are language aimsTo introduce the present perfect used with for and since To revise number recognition to 100

But there are other aims too: To improve speed reading of short texts

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(skill) To investigate how and when we use dictionaries (study skill) To work together in different pairs (class atmosphere)

Sometimes there are a teachers aims that are NOT shared with the class! To give Aisha more chance to answer questions (individual student) To improve timing and give homework clearly. (teachers personal development) There is very rarely one aim for a lesson, there are usually lots of different ones. And remember, if something unexpected comes up, you may have to change your aim. A lesson plan is not set in stone, it should be flexible.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 2 Have a look at these aims for lessons and sort them into the right columns: A couple have been done for you. Language A Skills Study skills C Classroom dynamics Student/teacher development

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A) To introduce times of the day and greetings. B) Extensive reading of document for gist C) To introduce vocabulary notebooks and how to use them D) To work individually with Group 3 on handwriting problems E) To test new seating arrangement for group work F) To work on giving clearer instructions with gestures. G) To plan a first draft using bullet point system H) To revise expressions of intention using want to and going to I) To introduce web research for language study J) To encourage boy/girl pairwork in role plays COMMENT 4:2 2 A and H are language aims B and G are skills aims C and I are study skills aims E and G are about classroom dynamics D and F are about development. They are all valid lesson aims. SELF-CHECK 4:2 3 Here are three teachers talking about what they are going to do in their lessons today. For each one, decide why they are doing this. What are the teachers aims? TEACHER 1

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Ive been talking and talking, explaining grammar too much in lessons recently. Today we are starting a new unit on Health and Fitness, so I have asked them to bring in information about what they ate for dinner last night. Ive got some food flashcards ready and were going to look at the reading in the book about healthy eating and work in groups for a large part of the lesson. Ill also introduce information at the end about a poster project I want them to do. TEACHER 2 Im tired today so Im going to get them to draw some pictures of animals and copy some information about them from this website I found. That should take them an hour but if they finish early Ill get them to learn any vocabulary they have forgotten. TEACHER 3 Ive got up to page 47 and we finished the past tense last lesson so Im going to teach the present perfect tense today by doing exercises 3, 4 and 5. Then we can copy the timeline in our books and do the pairwork on page 48. For writing practice they can do exercise 6.

COMMENT 4:2 3 TEACHER 1 This teacher has been thinking about class dynamics and development and wants a change. She aims to encourage interaction/discussion before and during the reading and is planning a longer project so that they can work together on some writing. It is all very practical and personal too and she has prepared a range of vocabulary cards. This teacher has planned well. TEACHER 2 Lets hope there are not too many lessons like this! This is a time filling lesson and does not have a clear aim or teach anything. The writing is only copying and the drawing is not related to English. The teacher has not planned to focus on study skills for the vocabulary learning, so probably the students will just sit and try to learn the words off by heart, which could be difficult. There is no introduction or ending planned or mention of a sequence of lessons. TEACHER 3
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This teacher is practical and organised but relies on the book too much. There is a clear language aim relating to grammar, and some different skills work but the teacher is not thinking about much else. This lesson is all related to doing things but not WHY we are doing them. There is no link with the past lesson. The teacher said three sentences and after each of them we could ask her WHY? because she has not said why.

PARTS AND STAGES OF A LESSON Teaching language successfully to ESOL students is a complex process requiring careful planning. The main purpose of your lesson is to teach 'something' to your learners, and it is important to use a range of methods, materials and activities to ensure the lesson works. To help organise our time and the process of teaching, we need to think about including separate stages of the lesson:1] Introduction/Warm up/Revision 2] Presentation 3] Practice and Production 4] Plenary or whole class review 1] INTRODUCTION/WARM UP/REVISION To understand language use, language must be introduced in context, or in real-life situations. At the start of a lesson, it is useful to 'set the scene' by encouraging the class to think about a particular topic, or function; or by
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brainstorming ideas onto the whiteboard, or by revising material from a previous lesson which will be useful for the lesson now. Some techniques we have looked at include: Open questions, pre-reading and pre-listening questions, the use of picture stimulus, spidergrams, including input from the students to find out what they know, the use of key words on the board and so on. This gets students thinking along the right lines, focussing their attention ready for new material to be presented, controlled by the teacher to set them on the right track. Remember, you do not always have to start a lesson cold. A good teacher (like teacher 1 above) has got the students ready even BEFORE they come to a lesson on a new topic by giving them a pre-study homework task. The benefits of this are many, but the advantage is most clearly seen when there is a big gap between lessons - for example if students come only once a week. Tasks and preparation mean they keep thinking about English from one week to the next.

2] PRESENTATION At some point in the lesson you need to make sure that you clearly present language that you want the students to focus on. This will be new language that they need to have explained to them with your help and guidance. Though we teach communicatively that does not mean that we leave the students in confusion. New material can be presented straight away with clear explanations and examples showing what the language means and how it is used. The target language is presented via a controlled model, such as a short written text, a dialogue or a grammatical structure, so that students can see or hear the new language as well as understanding its meaning and use. This provides a model for learners to copy and then use to produce their own language. If you use a real text to introduce language then the presentation is slightly different. This is the idea of focussing. If you do this you present a text to your students for comprehension and discussion and then ask them to focus on certain aspects of the language - relationship between the past tense and the past perfect or how to express comparison. It is slightly different as the language presentation may come further on in the lesson, but it is still there and should still be a teacher-led section of the lesson. You can use group and pair work discovery techniques - where you give students the information and they work out the rules. After they have tried you can clarify the rules for them and this will be your presentation stage. Harmer has good examples of the different ways this stage can be managed.
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3] PRACTICE AND PRODUCTION Practice consolidates the knowledge learners have hopefully gained from the presentation stage of the lesson, providing them with the opportunity to use the language meaningfully and successfully. The teacher's role here is to manage a range of activities which allow learners to try out the new language through pairwork and groupwork. This can take the form of guided dialogues, role plays, information gap activities and problem solving. The practice can be for oral, reading or writing skills, with texts and other stimuli introduced which include the target language which can then be practised in a range of activity types true/false comprehension questions, completion exercises, summarising, noting pros and cons for discussion and written work etc. Short written pieces using a certain style can be done and monitored carefully by the teacher - students can begin to experiment in oral practice trying out the language they have focussed on. Teachers should use a range of practice activities. This will help prevent lessons becoming predictable and it also builds in the element of repetition but in an interesting way. The teacher initiates, manages and encourages at this stage, intervening whenever necessary and checking for errors. These can be focussed on later in the lesson. As the lesson moves away from teacher guidance to semi-free or free language production by the student, we think of it in terms of language production. This production activity may take the form of a group solution to a problem [oral] or a written task, or the use of a particular grammatical item [ie story in past tense or descriptions of a person using adjectives/adverbs]. The final output by the student should meet the aims of the lesson with the teacher monitoring for errors but much more an observer than anything else at this stage. Here, the students should be producing the target language with minimal, if any, teacher interference. Always remember that you will not instantly have perfect production of language by your students. A new item, especially an important one such as past tense forms or personal pronouns needs a bit of thinking about and several weeks of revisiting by the students before they are secure. Whats more they will progess at different rates. Perfect production does not magically occur in every student at the same time! Your job is to make sure that they have a chance to experiment and learn through making mistakes. If you only ever do controlled practice, students do not have the chance to use what they know alongside what they are learning to use. Practice and production should be seen as leading from one to the other. It is no use springing a production task on students that you have not prepared them for through practice. For example, talking about what kind of movies you like does not lead immediately to students writing reviews of films. That is a different skill.
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Directing someone around your school in controlled practice does not lead straight to writing directions to your house as the vocabulary is completely different. You cannot give students a biography of a famous dead person to study and then expect them to write their own biography as the tenses are different for people still living. This is a common mistake among novice teachers and one you should watch out for as you begin teaching.

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4] PLENARY OR WHOLE CLASS REVIEW It is extemely important that you end your class cleanly and with a refocussing on what the class have been doing. Some teachers do this very formally by talking with the class about what we have been learning today or referring back to lesson aims written on the white board. The students can see how the lesson has progressed and how the activities are all linked. Some teachers have a short question and answer session in which the students give their opinion on what they think they have learnt. In other lessons the whole class review may be longer. For example, if your students have been writing letters in pairs or doing a discussion task in groups then you may wish them to present what they have done to the class. You also need this stage in the lesson to give your students a homework task while they are clearly focussed on you! SELF-CHECK 4:2 4 1. How does the role of the teacher change through an ESOL lesson as described above? 2. Match the parts of the lesson described to the four stages below. "I asked the class about the weather today, and we wrote some vocabulary on the board. Next, I gave out worksheets with pictures of the weather and days of the week, and as I played a listening of this week's weather forecast, students listened and matched the picture to the correct day. This was followed by pairwork, with an information gap activity in which students completed a weather map of Britain. The final activity was a written description of the weather in each season in their own country. Some of them read out what they had written to the class. For homework I gave them a research task on the climate in a range of different cities around the world so that we can prepare a class display next lesson. Introduction Presentation Practice Production Plenary Can you write aims for this lesson? TIME MANAGEMENT

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This involves something we can call flexible planning. That means you plan what is going to happen in a lesson but you are ready to change your mind if something does not go quite as you had planned. If we plan very rigidly then the students do not have a chance to go over something if they do not understand or move on quickly if they understand very fast. On the other hand if we are always distracted by trivia then the students will get frustrated as the aims of the lesson may not be fulfilled. Here are some common mistakes that teachers make. Teachers plan for 50 minutes of work in a 50 minute lesson. A 50 minute lesson is not 50 minutes long as the students have to get in and get organised then pack up and get out of the room. More like 45 minutes, sometimes only 40. Teachers plan a 1 minute brainstorm activity. Never write things into your plan that take one minute. They always take longer! Have you thought about the time taken to draw the spidergram or write down student suggestions? Group work goes on a lot longer than planned. Teachers dont plan the time it takes to move the furniture and give instructions. You often see work in groups for 10 minutes on teachers plans, but 5 minutes of that may be getting organised! Students are not handing in their homework - they say they didnt write it down. This is often the fault of the teacher who makes a lesson plan that does not allow 5 minutes for discussing homework. It does not have to be at the end of the lesson, but could be half way through or even at the beginning. It is also a sign that there is probably not a clear plenary stage at the end of the lesson. You should have an if time activity to do if you finish too quickly. You should have a cut off point in the last activity in the lesson that is clear and organised - not just finish that off for homework then. You should have a plenary before the end. If you have not finished the work, then stop at the cut off point and review. Give the homework in good time. Tell the students clearly that you will continue with the work next lesson. SELF-CHECK 4:2 5 a You will see a lesson plan for a 50 minute lesson. It is not detailed as we are just concentrating on timing. Can you spot 8 errors in this plan?
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Warm up (whole class) Ask who has a pet. Review q forms : Pairs Individual Parts of animals bodies, vocabulary input with diagram on the board. Individual Listening Peer checking

Our pets. Write up pets on board Ask and answer about the pets you have at home Questions about pets on board Where /when /what. Copy questions into your book and answer them for your own pet. Students repeat body parts: tail, ears, paws, as choral work. Draw a picture of pet and label it, similar to the diagram on page 45/ diagram on the board.. My pet - describing an animal. Text book page 46. Do exercises Students exchange books and check each others work. Give homework - finish off

5 minutes 5 minutes 10 minutes 5 minutes 10 minutes 10 minutes 5 minutes

COMMENT 4:2 5 a 1. It is a very busy lesson plan. Students move from writing to speaking to drawing to listening. By the end of the lesson their desks will have books and colour pencils and an exercise book on them, very messy. 2. The lesson is too long! The teacher has presumed that he/she has 50 minutes teaching time. 3. The plan presumes everyone will do things at the same speed. This is rarely true of a class. There will be people finishing early and others getting behind. 4. There is no homework writing down or discussion time. 5. There is no review, the lesson just stops and the teacher does not check work. 6. It is not flexible. What if a child has more than one pet or no pets at all? 7. Some timings are ambitious, eg individual work - only 10 mins? 8. There are no if time activities or cut off points. SELF-CHECK 4:2 5 b Now look at the plan again. How has the plan changed and why?

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Warm up (whole class/pairs) Ask who has a pet and then ask answer questions in pairs Feedback Parts of animals bodies. Vocabulary input with diagram on the board. Listening Give homework

Ask and answer about the pets you have at home. If you have no pets, talk about your favourite animal. Report back to class on what you have found out Teacher tells class about own pet and shows a picture. Teacher draws the most common pet in the class, eg cat. Students repeat body parts: tail, ears, paws, as choral work. My pet describing an animal. Text book page 46 Do exercises and check answers in pairs/with teacher Looking at the diagram on page 45, draw a picture of your pet and label it. If you dont have a pet, favourite animal. Write three facts about your animal under the picture and bring to next lesson. 10 review questions: oral Who has a pet tarantula? What do we call this part of the body?

10 minutes 5 minutes 5- 10 minutes 15 minutes 5 minutes

Plenary

5 minutes and pack up

COMMENT 4:2 5 b 1. Copying down questions from the board has been removed. 2. The free drawing activity has been left to the end of the lesson homework. If the teacher gets through the lesson more quickly, she can begin this in class time - if time activity. 3. There is flexibility for people who do not have pets. 4. The homework can be discussed 5. There is a clear plenary. Flexible timing is written into the plan - the last 10 minutes could be 5 if there is a problem.

PLANNING FOR GROUP WORK When planning a lesson you should look at what the students and the teacher will be doing at different stages of the lesson. This is important so that you prepare a variety of FOCUS. That means the students are not facing the teacher, listening to the teacher all the time. We have discussed this in many different
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sections of the course and it is fundamental to good lesson preparation and planning. PAIRWORK By using pairwork, students are encouraged with little, if any, teacher interference and have the chance to co-operate with other learners for the completion of a given task. It is important that learners can cope with the practice tasks set [which must be linked to the language focus and presentation for the lesson]. The materials must be of a suitable level and the content must be motivating. Dont take ages setting up pairwork for the students to say: Is it a tomato? No it isnt, it is a pear. and so on. Give them something interesting to do. It is also important to think about who to pair up. Work mixed ability into your pairwork with if time activities and cut off points as discussed above. Pairwork can be done easily and quickly without moving the furniture about if you have set your classroom up in a communicative way - remember you can even do it if the furniture is immovable! GROUP WORK Group work lends itself to a range of activities. Learners have the opportunity to communicate with others, in the target language, and group work can encourage strong and weak learners to participate in discussions, debates and problemsolving activities. Flexible groupings can be extremely motivating for students. They start off in a set group, then split and re-form. For example, 3 groups of A, B and C are each given a part of a story to prepare orally [A - introduction, B - the plot, C - the ending] They then make 3 new groups, with A, B, and C students to put together a completed narrative. This encourages every student to participate, to learn from others in the group, to listen and to encourage, leading to confidence, improved fluency and support for reading and writing tasks. Group projects are motivating, especially if there is a presentation plenary at the end or if work is to be displayed on the wall. Group work needs a clear task that will not be over in two minutes when you have spent five minutes setting up and moving the furniture! And remember, as we discussed in Unit 4 Module 1, not all groups have to do the same thing.

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SELF-CHECK 4:2 6 Here are some disadvantages in using pair work or group work activities in the ESOL classroom. Fill in the column with suggestions of how to cope. Try to use these key words in your answers. KEY WORDS: group roles, clear tasks, circulate, feedback, extension Disadvantage
The noise level may be quite high.

How to cope.
Make sure students are seated close enough together so that they do not have to shout.

Students may start using their mother tongue in a monolingual class. The teacher cannot listen to all of the students at the same time. Some students may do no work at all. Some students may finish more quickly than others. The focus is not on the teacher.

Pairs may not like each other.

The furniture is not set out in the right way. There is no control over what is going on in the group.

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PLANNING REVIEW Good planning means: 1. Being aware of the time you, the teacher, have to deliver your lesson and to achieve your aims 2. Specifying your aims for the lesson and how you intend to put over your teaching point(s) in a coherent manner. 3. Dividing your lesson up into stages. 4. Being aware of what the students will be doing at each stage (reading, taking part in group/pair work, listening to a tape etc.) 5. Choosing suitable situations and activities to exploit the teaching point(s). 6. Being aware of which lexical items are likely to be used by the students in these situations. (prediction) Teachers may present the same teaching point in different ways. One teacher may make more use of a textbook than another who might only include textbook material as a last resort. Planning inevitably involves rejection of ideas whatever the source may be as well as acceptance of them. See Unit 3 Module 4. Lesson planning is not easy. Take it seriously right from the beginning and you will gradually understand its importance and it will become easier. Start off as a lazy planner and you are cheating your students out of the chance to feel secure and succeed. Look at the following lesson plans as reference for producing your own.

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN ONE - GROUP/CLASS TEACHING Study the lesson plans which follow, then completeTASK 1.
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Level Lesson Duration Aims

Intermediate Adults 1 1/4 hours To practise the language used in recipes, following instructions, sequencing and talking about favourite dishes. Recognition of Imperative form for instructions Food vocabulary Language of sequencing [first, then, next ....] Use of 'you must' rather than imperative form Confusion of articles [Take a carrot , peel the carrot] Bring a carrot or potato into the lesson. Ask students to suggest how you could eat it. Then ask students about their favourite meat or vegetable. Put details on the board in 3 columns. Vegetables/meat ie potatoes How to prepare peel slice How to cook fry bake

Assumptions

Expected Problems Warm Up

Input

Tell the class that your favourite meal is Shepherd's Pie or another food that you know how to prepare. Explain the process, putting the stages on the board using flashcards to help explain vocabulary [ie chop] or realia, and using sequences [first, next ...] Limit to a maximum of 10 stages. Check that the group have understood and can reproduce the instructions orally.

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN ONE (continued) Practice 1 Pair work Hand out worksheets with pictures of various actions used when cooking [ie fry, mix, add]. Students match the verbs given to the pictures. They then complete a short passage below, putting the correct verb into the correct space to
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complete the recipe. Teacher monitors. ie "Take two large potatoes. First ......... the potatoes, then ........ them thinly and ........ gently in hot oil." Practice 2 Individual work Listening Students listen to someone giving instructions on making a Victoria Sandwich. The steps are given on a worksheet but in the wrong order. Students listen and put stages into the correct order. Students check in pairs. Teacher monitors. Students in groups prepare the recipe for a simple dish, possibly from one of their own countries. They discuss, then write down, the ingredients, and the steps involved, but also make a copy with details in the wrong order. These are then collected and handed out to different groups, who must rearrange the instructions into the correct order and produce their own version, finally comparing it with the correct original. Teacher sets up the groups and possibly appoints group leaders. Teacher then monitors, noting errors for future revision work and helping with unknown vocabulary. Plenary Some ingredients/recipes read out to the class. Question and answer on foods and ingredients. Revision of aims and key terms plus mistakes/strong points from group work. Students write down the recipe for a typical or favourite dish from their own country and bring it to the next lesson for wall display or for small leaflet of recipes (with samples of course, if possible!)

Production Groupwork

Homework

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SAMPLE LESSON PLAN TWO - ONE TO ONE TEACHING This is the scenario. A student has decided that he/she would like to attend a British university. Their standard of English is quite good but in order to get it up to university entrance standard they have decided to supplement school/college lessons with a weekly one-to-one lesson. This is likely to be a fairly long term arrangement so you will get to know each other very well. As the selection of, and application to, a university can be a lengthy procedure, you have decided to concentrate on this in the early stages. Level: Lesson duration: Aim: Object: Assumptions: Expected problems: Materials: Upper Intermediate. 2 hours To guide student through a typical university prospectus. To enable the student to make an informed choice when applying for university entrance. Student has chosen his/her subject and has a long list of suitable universities. Student is unfamiliar with collating information from a range of prospectuses and handbooks. Two or three prospectuses. Atlas/maps. Tourist brochures. Grid. General chat about everyday matters. This helps to build social skills and the vocabulary used when making small-talk. Since the lessons are only once a week, the student needs warming up.

Warm-up: (10 mins)

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SAMPLE LESSON PLAN TWO (continued) Introduction: (20 mins) Discuss with student what he/she might be looking for in a British university (other than a suitable course). Make a list together of key considerations. Allow student to lead the discussion as far as possible.
[Teacher should have a list of suitable ideas to prompt student if necessary].

Look at geographical situation of the universities under consideration. Look through tourist information. Presentation: (15 mins) Produce two or three prospectuses. Show how they all differ in layout. Begin to look at sections which address the particular concerns expressed in the Introduction.

[Teacher's note: unlike a class situation where you have prepared a lesson on a specific structure with pre-prepared materials, in this instance to a large extent you are letting the student dictate the material to be covered. Therefore it is important that you have familiarised yourself with all those aspects which you envisage the student will want to discuss. Naturally of particular concern will be information for international students].

Practice: (10 - 15 mins)

Give student photocopied pages of information for International Students to read through and ask him/her to highlight anything he/she doesn't understand or items of particular interest.
[Teacher's note: try to anticipate problem areas and prepare remedial materials - keep note of key vocabulary needed].

Teacher: B R E A K: (10 mins)

Whilst student is reading, put the kettle on and make a drink. Coffee and a chat. Once again let the student lead the way unless you have something specific you wish to discuss but keep it light. Possibly look more closely at the tourist material to give the student an idea of what is available in the vicinity of the university.

SAMPLE LESSON PLAN TWO (continued) Practice:

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Go through the reading material and test

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(20 mins) Production: (20 mins)

understanding. At this stage you can address any problems encountered Introduce the idea of formulating a chart to enable the student to compare the pros and cons of several universities. Using the pre-prepared grid, extract information to complete a comparison table. Get the student to suggest suitable column headings.

Suggestion for comparison table:

Situation City/Town/Rural Manchester York East Anglia No of foreign students Type(s) of accommodation English language lessons/assistance

Homework:

Read through other prospectuses and enter information onto grid. Bring list of 10 key words or phrases to the lesson next week.

Now before you complete the Tutor-assessed task, read the Appendix entitled Lesson Planning; this is an extract from The Practice of English Language Teaching, 3rd Edition, Jeremy Harmer, Longman.

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LESSON PLANNING APPENDIX

Lesson planning is the art of combining a number of different elements into a coherent whole so that a lesson has an identity which students can recognise, work within, and react to -whatever metaphor teachers may use to visualise and create that identity. But plans -which help teachers identify aims and anticipate potential problems -are proposals for action rather than scripts to be followed slavishly, whether they are detailed documents or hastily scribbled notes. Pre-planning Before we start to make a lesson plan we need to consider a number of crucial factors such as the language level of our students, their educational and cultural background, their likely levels of motivation, and their different learning styles. Such knowledge is, of course, more easily available when we have spent time with a group than it is at the beginning of a course. When we are not yet familiar with the character of a group, we need to do our best to gain as much understanding of them as we can before starting to make decisions about what to teach. We also need knowledge of the content and organisation of the syllabus or curriculum we are working with, and the requirements of any exams which the students are working towards. Armed now with our knowledge of the students and of the syllabus we can go on to consider the four main planning elements: i. Activities When planning, it is vital to consider what students will be doing in the classroom; we have to consider the way they will be grouped, whether they are to move around the class, whether they will work quietly side-by-side researching on the Internet or whether they will be involved in a boisterous group-writing activity. We should make decisions about activities almost independently of what language or skills we have to teach. Our first planning thought should centre round what kind of activity would be best for a particular group of students at a particular point in a lesson, or on a particular date. By deciding what kind of activity to offer them -in the most general sense -we have a chance to balance the exercises in our lessons in order to offer the best possible chance of engaging and motivating the class. The best lessons offer a variety of activities within a class period. Students may find themselves standing up and working with each other for five minutes before returning to their seats and working for a time on their own. The same lesson may end with a whole-class discussion or with pairs writing dialogues to practise a language function or grammar point. ii. Skills We need to make a decision about which language skills we wish our students to develop. This choice is sometimes determined by the syllabus or the course book. However, we still need to plan exactly how students are going to work with the skill and what sub-skills we wish to practise. Planning decisions about language skills and sub-skills are co-dependent with the content of the lesson and with the activities which the teachers will get students to take part in. iii. Language We need to decide what language to introduce and have the students learn, practise, research or use. One of the dangers of planning is that, where language is the main focus, it is the first and only planning decision that teachers make. Once the decision has been taken to teach the present continuous, for example, it is sometimes tempting to slip back into a drill-dominated teaching session which lacks variety and which may not be the best way to achieve our aims. But language is only one area that we need to consider when planning lessons. iv. Content Lesson planners have to select content which has a good chance of provoking interest and involvement. Since they know their students personally they are well-placed to select appropriate content. Even where the choice of subject and content is to some extent dependent on a course

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book, we can still judge when and if to use the course book's topics, or whether to replace them with something else. We can predict, with some accuracy, which topics will work and which will not. However, the most interesting content can be made bland if the activities and tasks that go with it are unimaginative. Similarly, subjects that are not especially fascinating can be used extremely successfully if the good planner takes time to think about how students can best work with them. When thinking about the elements we have discussed above we carry with us not only the knowledge of the students, but also our belief in the need to create an appropriate balance between variety and coherence. With all of these features in mind we can finally pass all our thinking through the filter of practical reality, where our knowledge of the classrooms we work in, the equipment we can use, the time we have available, and the attitude of the institution we work in all combine to focus our planning on what we are actually going to do. Now, as the figure below shows, we are in a position to move from pre-planning to the plan itself. Pre-Planning and the Plan
Teachers knowledge of the students Teachers knowledge of the syllabus

Activities

Language skills

Language type

Subject and content

Practical Realities

The Plan

The Plan Having done some pre-planning and made decisions about the kind of lesson we want to teach, we can make the lesson plan. This may take a number of different forms, depending upon the circumstances of the lesson and depending also, on our attitude to planning in general. The planning continuum The way that teachers plan lessons depends upon the circumstances in which the lesson is to take place and on the teacher's experience. Near one end of a 'planning continuum', teachers may do all the (vague) pre-planning in their head and make actual decisions about what to include in the lesson as they hurry along the corridor to the class. Those with experience can get away with this some of the time because they have a number of familiar routines to fall back on. Another scenario near the same end of the continuum occurs when teachers are following a course book and they do exactly what the book says, letting the course book writers, in effect, do their planning for them. This is especially attractive for teachers under extreme time pressure, though if we do not spend time thinking about how to use the course book activities (and what happens when we do) we may run into difficulties later. Effective coursebook use is more complex than this. At the very end of the planning continuum is the kind of lesson described by one writer as the 'jungle path', where teachers walk into class with no real idea of what they are going to do (Scrivener 1994b: 34-37); thus they might say 'What did you do last weekend?' and base the class on what replies they get. They might ask the students what they want to do that day, or take in an activity to start the class with no real idea of where it will lead them and their students. Such an approach is favoured by Mario Rinvolucri, who has suggested that instead of working to a pre-arranged plan, a teacher should be more like a doctor, basing treatment upon accurate diagnosis. All classes and students are different, he argued, so to decide beforehand what

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they should learn on a given day (especially when this is done some days before) is to confine them to a mental structure and ignore the 'flesh-and-blood here-and-now learners' (Rinvolucri 1996). Experienced teachers may well be able to run effective lessons in this way, without making a plan at all. When such lessons are successful they can be immensely rewarding for all concerned. But more often they run the risk of being muddled and aimless. There is a real danger that if teachers do not have a clear idea of their aims and, crucially, if the students cannot or will not help to give the lesson shape, "then nothing useful or meaningful can be achieved at all" (Malamah- Thomas 1987: 3). And though some students may enjoy the adventure of the jungle path, the majority will benefit both linguistically and psychologically from the forethought the teacher has given to the lesson. At the other end of the continuum teachers write formal plans for their classes which detail what they are going to do and why, perhaps because they are about to be observed or because they are required to do so by some authority. The vast majority of lesson planning probably takes place between these two extremes. Teachers may scribble things in their notebooks, sometimes only noting the page of a book or the name of an activity. Other teachers may write something more complex. Perhaps they list the words they are going to need, or write down questions they wish to ask. They may make a list of the web sites they want students to visit together with the information they have to look for online. We can represent this planning continuum diagrammatically in the following way:

Jungle path 0% Follow the coursebook exactly

Vague (corridor) plan

Formal plan 100% Planning notes

The actual form a plan takes is less important than the thought that has gone into it; the overriding principle is that we should have an idea of what we hope our students will achieve in the class, and that this should guide our decisions about how to bring it about. However, written plans (both sketchy and more detailed) do have a secondary function as a record of what has gone on, and in the lesson itself they help to remind teachers of what they had decided to do, what materials they need, and how long they had planned to spend on certain activities.

Making a plan The following example of making a plan exemplifies how a teacher might proceed from pre-planning to a final plan.
Pre-planning background For this lesson, some of the facts that feed into pre-planning decisions are as follows: The class is at intermediate level. There are 31 students. They are between the ages of 18 and 31. They are enthusiastic and participate well when not overtired. The students need 'waking up' at the beginning of a lesson. They are quite prepared to 'have a go' with creative activities. Lessons take place in a light classroom equipped with a whiteboard and an overhead projector. The overall topic thread into which the lesson fits involves forms of transport and different traveling environments. In the course book this will change next week to the topic of 'avoidable disasters'. The next item on the grammar syllabus is the construction should have + DONE. The students have not had any reading skills work recently. The students need more oral fluency work.

Pre-planning decisions As a result of the background information listed above the teacher makes the following decisions:

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The lesson should include an oral fluency activity. The lesson should include the introduction of should have + DONE. It would be nice to have some reading in the lesson. The lesson should continue with the transport theme - but make it significantly different in some way.

The plan On the basis of our pre-planning decisions we now make our plan. It should be emphasised that the following lists are not examples of any planning format since that is a matter of style unless we are planning formally (see below). The teacher has made the decision to have the students read the text about a space station, and build activities around this. The text does not come from their course book, but is one the teacher has used before. The probable sequence of the lesson will be: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) An oral fluency activity with 'changing groups' in which students have to reach a decision about what five personal possessions they would take into space. Reading for prediction and then gist, in which students are asked to say what they expect to be in a text about a space station, before reading to check their predictions and then reading again for detailed understanding. Ending the story, in which students quickly devise an ending for the story. New language introduction in which the teacher elicits 'should have' sentences and has students say them successfully. Language practice in which students talk about things they did or did not do, and which they should not or should have done A space job interview in which students plan and role-play an interview for a job in a space station.

However, the teacher makes (or thinks of) a list of additional task possibilities, for example: Interview Cathy years later to find out what happened to her. Students write a 'newsflash' programme based on what happened. A short extract from a video on future space exploration. Students discuss the three things they would miss most if they were on a space station.

The Formal Plan Formal plans are sometimes required, especially when, for example, teachers are to be observed and/or assessed as part of a training scheme or for reasons of internal quality control. A formal plan should contain some or all of the following elements: Class description and timetable fit: a class description tells us who the students are, and what can be expected of them. It can give information about how the group and how the individuals in it behave, as in the following example: CLASS DESCRIPTION The students in this upper intermediate class are between the ages of 18-31. There are 21 women and 10 men. There are PAs/secretaries, 5 housewives, 10 university students (3 of these are postgraduates), teachers, 2 businessmen, a musician a scientist, a chef, a shop assistant and a waiter. Because the class starts at 7:45 in the evening, students are often quite tired after a long day at work (or at their studies). They can switch off quite easily, especially if they are involved in a long and not especially interesting piece of reading, for

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example. However, if they get involved they can be noisy and enthusiastic. Sometimes this enthusiasm gets a little out of control and they start using their first language a lot. Depending on the circumstances of the plan, the teacher may want to detail more information about individual students, e.g. Hiromi has a sound knowledge of English and is very confident in her reading and writing abilities. However, she tends to be rather too quiet in group-work, since she is not especially comfortable at 'putting herself forward'. This tends to get in the way of the development of her oral fluency. Such detailed description will be especially appropriate with smaller groups, but becomes increasingly difficult to do accurately with larger classes. However, a record of knowledge of individual students gained through such means as observation, homework, and test scores is invaluable if we are to meet individual needs. We also need to say where the lesson fits in a sequence of classes (the before and after) as in the following example: TIMETABLE FIT The lesson takes place from 7:45 to 9pm on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. In the past three lessons the students have been discussing the issues of journeys and travelling - how people adapt to different travelling environments. They have listened to an interview with someone who lives in a bus and travels around the country looking for places to park it. They have been looking at vocabulary and expressions related to travelling. They have revisited a number of past tenses, including hypothetical past (third) conditionals ('If he hadn't lost his job, he wouldn't have sold his house'). Next week the class will start working on a 'crime and punishment' unit with includes a courtroom role-play with work on crime-related lexis, and passive constructions. We will also include information about how the class has been feeling and what kind of activities they have been involved in (eg: controlled or communicative, pair-work or group-work). All these factors should have influenced our planning choices for this lesson. Lesson aims The best classroom aims are specific and directed towards an outcome which can be measured. If we say My aim is that my students should/can... by the end of the class, we will be able to tell, after the lesson, whether that aim has been met or not. Aims should reflect what we hope the students will be able to do, not what the teacher is going to do. An aim such as to teach the present perfect is not really an aim at allexcept for the teacher. A lesson will often have more than one aim. We might well say, for example, that our overall objective is to improve our students' reading ability, but that our specific aims are to encourage them to predict content, to use guessing strategies to overcome lexical problems, and to develop an imaginative response to what they encounter. Aims can be written in plans as in the following example: AIMS 1. To allow students to practise speaking spontaneously and fluently about something that may 2. provoke the use of words and phrases they have been learning recently. 3. To give students practise in reading both for gist and for detail. 4. To enable students to talk about what people have 'done wrong' in the past, using the 'should (not) have' + 'done' construction.

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5. To have students think of the interview genre and list the kinds of questions which are asked in such a situation. Activities, procedures, and timing The main body of a formal plan lists the activities and procedures in that lesson, together with the times we expect each of them to take. We will include the aids we are going to use, and show the different interactions which will take place in the class. When detailing procedure, 'symbol' shorthand is an efficient tool to describe the interactions that are taking place: T=teacher; S=an individual student; TC=the teacher working with the whole class; S,S,S=students working on their own; SS=students working in pairs; SSSS=students in discussion with other pairs; GG=students working in groups, and so on. The following example shows how the procedure of an activity can be described: Activity/Aids Group decision making Interaction a TC B S,S,S c SS Pen and paper Procedure T tells students to list five things they would take into space with them SS make their lists individually In pairs students have to negotiate their items to come up with a shared list of only five items to take to a space station Pairs join with other pairs. The new groups have to negotiate their items to come up with a shared list of only five items to take to a space station The T encourages groups to compare their own lists Time 1

2 4

d SSSS (GG)

e TGG

Specific language that is to be focused on should also be included, as in this example: Activity/Aids Language study Interaction a TC Procedure T elicits sentences based on the previous problem identification session e.g. She shouldnt have been rude to Cathy. She should have looked at the record book. She should have told the others where she was going. Time 1

Space station Text/board

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b TS,S,S

T has students say the sentences, and may do individual/class work on the pronunciation of the shortened form /v/ e.g. shouldve, and /ntv/ shouldnt have.

10

Problems and possibilities: a good plan tries to predict potential pitfalls and suggests ways of dealing with them. It also includes alternative activities in case we find it necessary to divert from the lesson sequence we had hoped to follow. When listing anticipated problems it is a good idea to think ahead to possible solutions we might adopt to resolve them, as in the following example: Anticipated problems Students may not be able to think of items to take to a space station with them for activity 1 Possible solutions I will keepmy eyes open and go to prompt any individuals who look vacant or puzzled with questions about what music, books, pictures, etc. they might take I will do some isolation and distortion work until they can say /ntv/

Students may have trouble contracting should not have in activity 4

Where we need to modify our lesson dramatically, we may choose to abandon what we are doing and use different activities altogether. If our lesson proceeds faster than we had anticipated, on the other hand, we may need additional material anyway. It is therefore sensible, especially in formal planning, to list additional possibilities, as in the following example: ADDITIONAL POSSIBILITIES Extra speaking: If some groups finish first they can quickly discuss what three things from home they would most miss if they were on a space station. News broadcast: Students could write an earth 'newsflash' giving news of what happened at the space station starting 'We interrupt this programme to bring you news of...

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Video clip:

Interview plus:

If there's time I can show the class an extract from the 'Future of Space Exploration' programme. Interview Cathy years later to find out what happened to her.

Planning a sequence of lessons

Planning a sequence of lessons is based on the same principles as planning a single lesson, but there are number of additional issues which we need to pay special attention to: Before and during However carefully we plan, in practice unforeseen things are likely to bare themselves during the course of a lesson, and so our plans are continually modified in the light of these. Even more than a plan for an individual lesson, a scheme of work for weeks or months of lessons is only a proposal of what we hope to achieve in that time. We will need to revisit this scheme constantly to update it. Short and long-term goals However motivated a student may be at the beginning of a course, the level of that motivation may fall dramatically if the student is not engaged or if they cannot see where they are going -or know when they have got there. In order for students to stay motivated, they need goals and rewards. While a satisfactory long-term goal may be 'to master the English language', it can seem only a dim and distant possibility at various stages of the learning cycle. In such circumstances students need short-term goals too, such as the completion of some piece of work (or some part of the programme), and rewards such as success on small, staged lesson tests, or taking part in activities designed to recycle knowledge and demonstrate acquisition. When we plan a sequence of lessons, we need to build in goals for both students and ourselves to aim at, whether they are end-of-week tests, or major revision lessons. That way we can hope to give our students a staged progression of successfully met challenges. Thematic strands One way to approach a sequence of lessons is to focus on different content in each individual lesson. This will certainly provide variety. It might be better, however, for themes to carry over for more than one lesson, or at least to reappear, so that students perceive some coherent topic strands as the course progresses. With such thematic threads we and our students can refer backwards and forwards both in terms of language - especially the vocabulary that certain topics generate -and also in terms of the topics we ask them to invest time in considering.

Language planning When we plan language input over a sequence of lessons we want to propose a sensible progression of syllabus elements such as grammar, lexis, and functions. We also want to build in sufficient opportunities for recycling or remembering language, and for using language in productive skill work. If we are following a course book closely, many of these decisions may already have been taken, but even in such circumstances we need to keep a constant eye on how things are going, and with the knowledge of 'before and after' modify the programme we are working from when necessary. Language does not exist in a vacuum, however. Our decisions about how to weave it through the lesson sequence will be heavily influenced by the need for a balance of activities. Activity balance The balance of activities over a sequence of lessons is one of the features which will determine the overall level of student involvement in the course. If we get it right, it will also provide the widest range of experience to meet the different learning styles of the students in the class. Over a period of weeks or months we would expect students to have received a varied diet of activities; they should not have to role-play every day, nor would we expect every lesson to be devoted exclusively to language study (in the ways we described it in Chapter 11). There is a danger, too, that they might become

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bored if every Friday was the reading class, every Monday the presentation class, every Wednesday was speaking and writing. In such a scenario the level of predictability may have gone beyond the sufficient to the exaggerated. What we are looking for, instead, is a blend of the familiar and the new. Planning a successful sequence of lessons means taking all these factors into consideration and weaving them together into a colourful but coherent tapestry.

Using lesson plans

However carefully we plan and whatever form our plan takes we will still have to use that plan in the classroom and use our plans as records of learning for reference. Action and reaction Planning a lesson is not the same as scripting a lesson. Wherever our preparations fit on the planning continuum, what we take into the lesson is a proposal for action, rather than a lesson blueprint to be followed slavishly. And our proposal for action, transformed into action in the classroom, is bound to 'evoke some sort of student reaction' (Malamah- Thomas 1987: 5). We then have to decide how to cope with that reaction and whether, in the light of it, we can continue with our plan or whether we need to modify it as we go along. There are a number of reasons why we may need to modify our proposal for action once a lesson is taking place: Magic moments Some of the most affecting moments in language lessons happen when a conversation develops unexpectedly, or when a topic produces a level of interest in our students which we had not predicted. The occurrence of such magic moments helps to provide and sustain a group's motivation. We have to recognise them when they come along and then take a judgment about whether to allow them to develop, rather than denying them life because they do not fit into our plan. Sensible diversion: another reason for diversion from our original plan is when something happens which we simply cannot ignore, whether this is a surprising student reaction to a reading text, or the sudden announcement that someone is getting married! In the case of opportunistic teaching, we take the opportunity to teach language that has suddenly come up. Similarly, something might occur to us in terms of topic or in terms of a language connection which we suddenly want to develop on the spot.

Unforeseen problems: however well we plan, unforeseen problems often crop up. Some students may find an activity that we thought interesting incredibly boring; an activity may take more or less time than we anticipated. It is possible that something we thought would be fairly simple for our students turns out to be very difficult (or vice versa). We may have planned an activity based on the number of students we expected to turn up, only to find that some of them are absent. Occasionally we find that students have already come across material or topics we take into class, and our common sense tells us that it would be unwise to carry on. In any of the above scenarios it would be almost impossible to carry on with our plan as if nothing had happened; if an activity finishes quickly we have to find something else to fill the time. If students cannot do what we are asking of them, we will have to modify what we are asking of them. If some students (but not all) have already finished an activity we cannot just leave those students to get bored. It is possible to anticipate potential problems in the class and to plan strategies to deal with them. But however well we do this, things will still happen that surprise us, and which, therefore, cause us to move away from our plan, whether this is a temporary or permanent state of affairs. However well we plan, our plan is just a suggestion of what we might do in class. Everything depends upon how our students respond and relate to it. In Jim Scrivener's words, 'prepare thoroughly. But in class, teach the learners -not the plan' (Scrivener 1994b: 44).

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Plans as records and research tools Written plans are not just proposals for future action; they are also records of what has taken place. Thus, when we are in the middle of a sequence of lessons, we can look back at what we have done in order to decide what to do next. Since we may have to modify our lessons depending on student reactions we need to keep a record of how successful certain activities were to aid our memory. A record of lessons can also help colleagues if and when they have to teach for us when we are absent. Our original written plans will, therefore, have to be modified in the light of what actually happened in the classes we taught. This may simply mean crossing out the original activity title or course book page number, and replacing it with what we used in reality. However, if we have time to record how we and the students experienced the lesson, reflecting carefully on successful and less successful activities, not only will this help us to make changes if and when we want to use the same activities again, but it will also lead us to think about how we teach and consider changes in both activities and approach. Lesson planning in this way allows us to act as our own observers and aids us in our own development.

TASK FOR SUBMISSION TO YOUR TUTOR TASK 1 And now the big one. You have had a great deal of input on how to organise lessons, what needs to be taken into consideration, how language works, what students are like and so on. Your task is to prepare a lesson plan to teach a group of ESOL students a structure of your choice. You should: Indicate the language focus, aims and level of the lesson. Clearly indicate rough timing of the lesson. It should be 45 minutes or more. Show clearly different stages of the lesson and indicate the role of the teacher at each of these stages. Include any worksheets, reading texts or other materials that you plan to use, so that these may be assessed.

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Include different types of grouping and activities in your lesson. Say what the last lesson might have been and what a follow up lesson might be. Show that you have a clear idea of how the language point you are teaching is used.

PART 2 SELF-DEVELOPMENT
This part is all about the support that is available for you. As an EFL teacher in the 21st century you are part of a global community and you should never feel lonely! The INTESOL course is finished but your life as a teacher is not finished. Some of you on this course are already teaching in classrooms, some of you are about to start and others of you may be doing private lessons. Whatever you are doing you must never stop looking for ways to improve your teaching and learning throughout your professional life. You do not know all there is to know about teaching, nor do the INTESOL team. Be a lifelong learner! YOU The most important person for ensuring that you develop as a teacher is you yourself. Always reflect on your lessons and be prepared for change and experimentation.

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Some teachers keep a teaching diary where they note things down on a regular basis. They may keep a record of how they feel about their lessons, any good ideas they had, any lessons that didnt go well and other details. Teachers who keep diaries report that they are an excellent way of focussing your mind on what goes on in your classes and they can be organised as you wish. COLLEAGUES They are always around, but it is surprising how often teachers in the same staffroom do not talk to each other very much! It is very easy for a non-sharing atmosphere to develop among colleagues who are pressed for time and feeling insecure about their teaching. Staff rooms become competitive and teachers keep all their best ideas to themselves. If this atmosphere develops or has already developed in the place where you go to work, then try to change it little by little. Make a notice board where teachers can pin up their new ideas. Suggest adding a five minute new idea of the week section to staff meetings. Individually ask colleagues for assistance. Perhaps you have just thought of a new teaching activity which looks good. It may look perfect to you, but your colleague could help you develop the idea. Explaining an idea to a colleague is very useful practice for explaining to learners - if your colleague cannot follow the activity then probably the learners wont either! Similarly, if you have been having a problem with a few of the learners, dont be afraid to say so to a colleague. You may find that he/she had the same problem with the same learners last year. You can brainstorm a solution together! When you have a good relationship with colleagues, ask if you can sit in on their lessons. This is a good way to make yourself aware of the varied techniques that teachers use and you will definitely pick up some new tips. Experienced colleagues, often with positions such as Senior Teacher or Head of English can be very helpful and reassuring and are often more available when you want to ask for help as their teaching load is less. However, if your Senior Teacher always looks busy and harassed then make a formal appointment to see them! Ask them to observe your lessons informally and to give you their advice, dont wait for formal assessments! BEING OBSERVED Two words to set the hearts of teachers quivering. But lesson observation is a very important part of development if it is handled well. 1. Show your proposed lesson plan for your observation to other colleagues and listen to their suggestions.

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2. Do not be overly ambitious and try to reinvent the wheel. As INTESOL trainers we have seen teachers going crazy with endless flashcards that end up on the floor, activities that are incomprehensible, video clips that are too complicated and so on and the ensuing lesson is a muddle. 3. Dont suddenly spring new techniques on your students just because your boss is coming in. They will not understand what you are doing and you will make them nervous too. 4. Include a clear language teaching point in your observation so that the observer understands that you can teach language. 5. Most of all listen to what the observer tells you. Observers are not hostile people who want to fire you; they are there to make sure that you are coping in your classroom and that the students are getting a good experience. Not all goes smoothly in teaching. Sometimes you can feel that the students are restless or uneasy. It may be time to get them involved in feeding back or evaluating what they are doing and how they see you as a teacher.

SELF-CHECK 4:2 7 You want to find out what your learners think of : 1. 2. 3. 4. You as a teacher The teaching styles and activities you use The course or Any lessons in particular

How many ways can you think of for doing this? COMMENT 4:2 7 The simple two word answer here is ask them. But it is how you ask them that is interesting. Read on. You care about whether you are doing well or badly. It is very important for our professional development that we do not sit back and presume that we are doing everything right, or alternatively, plod on, depressed and thinking everything we do is wrong! Ask the learners. LEARNERS FEEDBACK TO YOU

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Take an activity that you might wish to change in some way. Give out a questionnaire (example shown below), after the activity/lesson and ask the learners to tick the appropriate boxes. Tell them that you do not want their names on the paper and while they are filling in the questionnaire, stay at your desk to ensure their privacy. You can also tell them why you are using these questionnaires: to develop your techniques, to help them learn better etc. Find time in the next lesson to talk to them about the results. Most of you enjoyed the roleplay, but you didnt think the competitive find the information was very useful. Please fill in the questionnaire about todays lesson/ an activity: Number the following stages: 1= very interesting/ useful 5= not interesting/not useful The brainstorming before reading the text: Guess the title The skimming activity: 3 minutes to change your title The scanning activity: Who can find the information first? The careful reading: Who was where at the time of the murder? The roleplay: Act out one of the possible versions of the murder (groups) Any suggestions/comments?

Using the results of the questionnaire, you can locate points in the lesson which were effective and those that were not very effective from the learners point of view. However you get the information and whatever it is, use it and share it. You can also organise discussions with students about their learning. It can work well if you leave the room for 5 minutes to allow them to discuss points they want to raise and write them on the white board. You can then return and discuss them. But you must be able to accept what they say and not get angry if they give their honest opinion of your ability with flashcards or your punctuality! Feedback is usually very valuable indeed as it clears the airs of any little points that are worrying the students and usually they have nice things to say about you as well. FORMAL EVENTS AND LOCAL GROUPS Seminars and conferences are where you can pick up some of the latest developments in ELT and useful ideas for teaching. It is also fun to make contact with nationally or internationally recognised people in ELT. Many big names in teaching, including the writer of your course text book Jeremy Harmer, can be found at conferences. Your access to such events will
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depend on where you live and how much money you have available to travel, but most big conferences also post their proceedings on the Web these days, so you can catch up on events you missed. The International teachers and educators group IATEFL hold a big conference each year and have groups in many countries. Their contact details appear on their website. LITERATURE AND PUBLICATIONS Books are wonderful friends, especially for those of you who do a lot of private teaching and do not have as many colleagues. Harmer gives a comprehensive list of useful titles and INTESOL has a short list too. Books are great sources of ideas, but dont neglect the journals, newspapers and magazines that are also around. Harmer mentions one or two major publications that you might like to subscribe to. The EL Gazette is a lively newspaper format publication looking at new developments in ELT and with plenty of information on study opportunities. That brings us to the web. There are hundreds of ELT websites; some are small ones that teachers have set up their own and some are huge organisations. Obviously new ones are developing all the time. Approach web materials with care as they are not always very professional but there are wonderful ideas out there. You may already have a favourite site. FURTHER TRAINING The most obvious next step up in terms of training and qualifications is a Diploma in English Language Teaching when you have had some more experience. Such a course goes into linguistics and developments in methodology in more depth and takes a serious look at such issues as phonology and culture in ELT. The more years you have behind you, the more you bring to a course at that level. When you feel up to the challenge, you might also look at the many university run MA programmes, some of which can be done by distance. On the other hand you may want to specialise and take a course in Teaching Young Learners. There are also courses for special qualifications, such as the Certificate in Teaching English for Specific Purposes. So development does not end after the course. There are many options open to you and many opportunities that you can create for yourself and your colleagues. Your final task for this course is designed to focus forwards to your future development.

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Now consider the following extract:

What teachers do next

In her course for language teachers, Penny Ur discussed the difference between teachers 'with 20 years' experience and those with one year's experience repeated 20 times' (Ur 1996: 317). Naturally we admire the first teacher and disapprove of (or sympathise with) the second. Nothing could be more deadening for a teacher than 20 years of repetition, especially in the interactive and dynamic world of the classroom. Our students, too, deserve teachers who are alive to the possibility of change and who keep up-to-date with what is going on, not only in the world of English language teaching, but also in the world at large. The truth, however, is that no matter how much we enjoy meeting new students at the beginning of a new course, it is sometimes difficult to maintain a sense of excitement and engagement when using the same old lesson routines or reading texts time after time. The increasing predictability of student reactions and behaviour can - if we do not take steps to prevent it - dent even the most ardent initial enthusiasm. Teaching should be different from this, though. It can and should be a permanent process of change and growth. At the beginning of our careers we go on teacher training courses where we are taught what to do. It is as our careers develop, however, that instead of being trained (or in addition to be trained), we should seek to develop ourselves and our teaching. Teacher development means many different things to different people. Brian Tomlinson suggests that in a teacher development approach teachers are given new experiences to reflect and learn from (Tomlinson 2003). For him, the best of these tools is to involve teachers in writing teaching materials since when they do this they have to think carefully about what they want to do, why they want to do it and how to make it happen. Bill Templer, on the other hand, thinks that 'we need to hold up mirrors to our own practice, making more conscious what is beneath the surface' (Templer 2004). Paul Davis says that 'as development becomes more powerful, the role of the trainer will become less important' (Davis 1999). Sandra Piai was extremely impressed to hear a participant in a teacher development workshop say 'You can train me, and you can educate me, but you can't develop me - I develop' (Piai 2005: 21).

Reflection paths
Holding up mirrors to our practice (in Templer's words - see above) means being a reflective teacher. In other words, we need to think about (to reflect on) what we are doing and why. Some reflection is simply a matter of thinking about what is happening in our lessons (and our lives) as we take the metro home from work, but there are a number of more organised ways of doing this.

Keeping journals One way of provoking self-analysis and reflection on our teaching is by keeping our own journals in which we record our thoughts about our teaching and our students. Journals are powerful reflective devices which allow us to use introspection to make sense of what is going on around us. Journal-writing is powerful for two main reasons. In the first place, the act of writing the journal forces us to try to put into words thoughts which, up till then, are inchoate, offering, in this condition, little chance for real introspection. Secondly, the act of reading our own journals makes us engage again with what we experienced, felt or worried about. As a result of this re-engagement, we might quite possibly come to conclusions about what to do next. Negative and positive
If real development can only come from within, then it is by looking inside ourselves and seeking to understand or change what we find there that is likely to be the most effective way of moving forward and making things better.

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Linda Bawcom, in an article devoted to preventing stress and countering teacher burnout, suggests making lists and seeing what they tell us. For example, we might draw up a list of professional priorities, such as the one in Figure 1. In the left-hand column we say what actually happens by numbering the items 1-12. Then, in the right-hand column, we re-prioritise the items as we would like them to be. The difference between the reality and what we wish for gives us the beginnings of a development plan.

Recording ourselves
Another way of reflecting upon our own teaching practice is to record ourselves. Bill Templer (see above) suggests using a cheap tape recorder which we can leave running during the lesson. When the lesson is over, we can listen to the tape to remind us of what went on. Frequently, this will lead us to reflect on what happened and perhaps cause us to think of how we might do things differently in the future. Many teachers have derived benefit (and some surprise) from having their lessons filmed. Watching ourselves at work is often slightly uncomfortable, but it can also show us things which we were not aware of.

Professional literature
There is much to be learnt from the various methodology books, journals and magazines produced for teachers of English. Books and articles written by teachers and theorists will often open our eyes to new possibilities. They may also form part of action research or 'search' and 'research' cycles (see below), either by raising an issue which we want to focus on or by helping us to formulate the kinds of questions we wish to ask. There are a number of different journals which cater for different tastes; whereas some report on academic research, others prefer to describe classroom activities in detail, often with personal comment from the writer. Some journals impose a formal style on their contributors, whereas others allow for a variety of approaches, including letters and short reports. Some journals are now published exclusively on the Internet, while others have Internet archives of past articles. When teachers join professional teacher organisations, they often receive that organisation's journal or newsletter. Members of special interest groups (such as the Teacher Development Special Interest Group TD SIG of IATEFL) will also get publications for that SIG. These newsletters and journals are a valuable way of keeping in touch with what is going on in the world of English language teaching. Not only do they inform us about new developments and ideas, but they also keep us in touch with colleagues whose concerns, it soon becomes apparent, are similar to ours.

Action research
This starts when we identify an issue we wish to investigate. We may want to know more about our learners

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and what they find motivating and challenging. We might want to learn more about ourselves as teachers how effective we are, how we look at our students, how we would look at ourselves if we were observing our own teaching. We might want to gauge the interest generated by certain topics or judge the effectiveness of certain activity types. We might want to see if an activity would work better done in groups rather than pairs, or investigate whether reading is more effective with or without pre-teaching vocabulary. We might want to find out why something isn't working. Whichever of these issues we choose, we will want to formulate questions we want answered so that we can decide how we are going to gather data. Having collected the data, we analyse the results, and it is on the basis of these results that we decide what to do next. We may then subject this new decision to the same examination that the original issue generated (this possibility is reflected by the broken line in Figure 2). Alternatively, having resolved one issue, we may focus on a different problem and start the process afresh for that issue.

Gathering data In order for our inquiry or case study to be effective, we have to gather data. There are many ways of doing this, but two of them have already been mentioned above. For example, we might decide to keep a journal about one specific aspect of teaching (e.g. what happens when students work in groups) and write entries about this at the end of every day's teaching. After, say, 14 days of this, we will have a lot of evidence. Alternatively, we might record ourselves (or have ourselves filmed) doing particular tasks so that we can assess their effectiveness. But there are other data-gathering methods, too.

Observation tasks: we can design data-gathering worksheets which are easy to use, but which will give us valuable information. For example, we could have a list of student names in a column. Each time a student says something, we can put a tick against his or her name. After a few lessons we will have a much clearer and more accurate idea of individual participation. Interviews: we can interview students and colleagues about activities, materials, techniques and procedures. Written questionnaires: questionnaires, which are sometimes more effective than the interviews we described above, can get respondents to answer open questions such as How did you feel about activity X?, yes/noquestions such as Did you find activity easy? or questions which ask for some kind of rating X response. Breaking rules and changing environments: in a groundbreaking work, John Fanselow (1987) suggested that one way of developing is to break our own rules and see what happens. If we normally teach one way, in other words, we should try teaching in the opposite way and see what effect it has. If we normally move around the class all the time, perhaps we should see what happens if we spend the whole lesson sitting in the same place. The results may be surprising and will never be less than interesting.

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One way to help us think about doing things differently is a technique called 'Cataloguing nightmares' (see Figure 3). In this we complete the left - hand column with a list of the things that go wrong - or that we are frightened might go wrong - in our lessons. In the next column, we say what happens which makes these things go wrong. Finally, in the right-hand column, we write down an opposite procedure from the one described in the middle column. We now have a plan of action for breaking rules - or at least completely upending the routines we use. Our new 'opposite procedure' may not work, but at least it will allow us to view the problem differently and maybe gain some insights into how to change things (again) in the future.

Developing with others

Not all reflection, reading or action research needs to be done by teachers working alone. There are many ways teachers can confer with each other and develop together, either face to face or, increasingly, online.

Cooperative/collaborative development
Teachers, like anyone else, need chances to discuss what they are doing and what happens to them in class so that they can examine their beliefs and feelings. However much we have reflected on our own experiences and practice, most of us find discussing our situation with others helps us to sort things out in our own mind. Julian Edge coined the term cooperative development (Edge 1992a and b) to describe a specific kind of relationship between speakers and the people listening to them. In cooperative development 'a relationship of trust is necessary' (Edge 2003: 58) between speakers who interact with understanders;a teacher, in this case, talks to an empathetic colleague. The empathetic colleague (the understander) makes every effort to understand the speaker but crucially, in Edge's realisation, does not interpret, explain or judge what he or she is hearing. All that is necessary is for the understander to say 'This is what I'm hearing. This is what I've understood. Have I got it right?' (Edge 1992a: 65). The understander's side of the bargain is that 'she will put aside her own thoughts, ideas and evaluations in order to concentrate on understanding what the speaker has to say' (Edge 2003: 58). This style of empathising is similar to 'co-counselling', where two people agree to meet and divide the allotted time in half so that each is a speaker and listener for an equal time period (Head and Taylor 1997: 143-144).

Peer teaching, peer observation

In our teaching lives we are frequently observed by others. It starts on teacher training courses and goes on when academic coordinators or directors of study come into our lessons as part of some quality control exercise. In all these situations the observed teacher is at a disadvantage since the observers - however sympathetically they carry out their function - have power over the teacher's future career. There are very few teachers who welcome this kind of visitation. However, many of us would welcome the opportunity to talk to someone about a lesson we have just taught, hoping that they would help us to understand what happened at certain moments or suggest ways of

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making things more effective. This was the case with a teacher called Poh in Hong Kong who invited her colleague Thomas Farrell into her lessons as part of her own self-development. She wanted an outsider's view of her teaching practices, a view which was not totally dependent on her own or her students' reactions. Thomas Farrell thus became her 'critical friend' and soon noted, with interest, that even before Poh had seen his observation notes, she 'addressed most of the issues I had raised'. Perhaps Farrell had taken on a 'proactive role of promoting reflection within our friendship by acting as a catalyst for Poh to look at her teaching' (Farrell 2001: 372). It sounds like the ideal arrangement - equal colleagues observing each other so that they (or at least one of them) can develop.

Teachers' groups One of the most supportive environments for teachers, where real teacher development can take place, is in small teacher groups. In this situation colleagues, usually working in the same school, meet together to discuss any issues and problems which may arise in the course of their teaching. Some teacher development meetings of this kind are organised by principals and directors of study. Outside speakers and animators are occasionally brought in to facilitate discussions. The director of studies may select a topic - in conjunction with the teachers - and then asks a member of staff to lead a session. What emerges is something halfway between bottom-up teacher development and top-down in-service teacher training (INSETT). At their best, such regular meetings are extremely stimulating and insightful. In many schools an INSETT coordinator is appointed to arrange a teacher development programme. Where this is done effectively, he or she will consult widely with colleagues to see what they would most like to work on and with. Teachers' associations There are many teachers' associations around the world. Some of them are international, such as IATEFL, based in Britain and TESOL, based in the USA; some are country-based, such as JALT (in Japan), FAAPI (in Argentina), ELICOS (in Australia) or ATECR (in the Czech Republic); still others are smaller and regional, such as APIGA (in Galicia, Spain) or CELTA (in Cambridge, England).
Teachers' associations provide two possible development opportunities:

Conferences and seminars: conferences, meetings and workshops allow us to hear about the latest developments in the field, take part in investigative workshops and enter into debates about current issues in theory and practice. We can 'network' with other members of the ELT community and, best of all, we learn that other people from different places, different countries and systems even, share similar problems and are themselves searching for solutions. Perhaps the best moments in conferences are the conversations that participants have with each other after they've been to talks and workshops. As we walk out of other people's sessions, we compare notes with fellow attenders, and as we do so, we find ourselves having to justify why we have reacted as we have to what we have heard. These exchanges are often significantly more important than the sessions themselves since they offer very real (even if short) self-development opportunities as we grapple with our feelings and thoughts about what we have experienced. Presenting: submitting a paper or a workshop for a teachers' association meeting, whether regional, national or international, is one of the most powerful catalysts for reflecting upon our practice. When we try to work out exactly what we want to say and the best way of doing it, we are forcing ourselves to assess what we do. The challenge of a future audience sharpens our perceptions.

The virtual community

There is no real substitute for people meeting together in the same physical space to share experiences, ideas, hopes and fears. But there are alternatives, and the plethora of different sites and user groups on the

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Internet offers teachers considerable scope in talking to colleagues all over the world at all hours of the day or night. There are many different groups of this kind. There are also people who meet when taking part in real-time chat forums (quite apart from conference calls using audio or videoware). In the future it will be increasingly common and unsensational for people to contact each other online like this. We have said that real face-to-face communication is always better than online discussion whether or not it takes place in real time or whether it is the result of emails posted on a group noticeboard at different times. Yet the huge advantage of online communication is the fact that someone from Ankara, say, can talk to someone from Vermont very easily - and that all the other members of the group, whether or not they are participating or lurking (i.e. reading all the postings without replying), can be members of the group wherever they are located.

Moving outwards and sideways

In order to enhance professional and personal growth, teachers sometimes need to step outside the world of the classroom where the concentration, all too frequently, is on knowledge and skill alone. There are other issues and practices which can be of immense help in making their professional understanding more profound and their working reality more rewarding. Learning by learning One of the best ways of reflecting upon our teaching practice is to become learners ourselves again, so that our view of the learning-teaching process is not always influenced from one side of that relationship. By voluntarily submitting ourselves to a new learning experience, especially (but not only) if this involves us in learning a new language, our view of our students' experience can be changed. As Luke Prodromou found when he decided to learn Spanish, Going back to school, and being on the receiving end of the foreign language learning process, confronted me with challenge after challenge to my assumptions about good language teaching' (2002b: 58).

Supplementing teaching One way of countering the potential sameness of a teacher's life is to increase our range of occupations and interests so that teaching becomes the fixed centre in a more varied and interesting professional life. There are many tasks that make a valuable contribution to the teaching and learning of English. First among these is writing materials - whether these are one-off activities, longer units or whole books. Materials writing can be challenging and stimulating, and when done in tandem with teaching can provide us with powerful insights, so that both the writing and the teaching become significantly more involving and enjoyable. Teachers can become involved in far more than just materials (or article) writing, however. The various exam boards such as Cambridge ESOL, Trinity Exams, TOEFL, TOEIC and others are always on the lookout for markers, examiners and item writers. As with publishing, teachers who are interested in this area should find out the name of the relevant subject officer and write to them, expressing their interest and saying who they are and where they work. Many people now set up their own websites where they provide material either by subscription or free of charge. It is no longer difficult or expensive to record material which can be made available as MP3 files (and so be downloaded as podcasts). Other teachers help to organise entertainments for their students or run drama groups, sports teams or conversation get-togethers. Many teachers see a change of teaching sector as a developmental move, both as a way of researching teaching and also as a way of making life more challenging and more interesting. Perhaps the most interesting move, in this sense, is to become involved in training teachers since this is not only extremely rewarding but also forces us to examine what we do and how we do it in a way that has huge developmental benefits. But any move to a different kind of teaching (such as one-to-one, exam teaching or business English, if these are things we have not done before) will force us to look at our teaching afresh

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and, by providing us with new challenges, has the power to revitalise our professional lives. Finally, some teachers become involved in the running and organising of teachers' associations. Most associations allow any member to stand for election and there is no doubt that those who become committee members, treasurers and presidents of, say, IATEFL or TESOL get a huge amount of personal satisfaction from being involved in running organisations like this.

Being well
Teachers need to care for their bodies to counteract stress and fatigue. Katie Head and Pauline Taylor (1997: Chapter 6) suggest techniques for breathing and progressive relaxation. They advocate the use of disciplines such as Tai-chi, yoga and the Alexander technique to achieve greater physical ease and counteract possible burnout.

One of a teacher's chief physical attributes is the voice. Roz Comins observes that at least one in ten long-serving teachers need clinical help at some time in their career to counteract vocal damage (1999: 8). Yet voice is part of the whole person, both physically and emotionally. When we misuse it, it will let us down. But when we care for it, it will help to keep us healthy and build our confidence. We can do this by breathing correctly and resting our voice and ourselves when necessary. We can drink water or herbal tea rather than ordinary tea, coffee or cola if and when we suffer from laryngitis; we can adjust our pitch and volume and avoid shouting and whispering. Many teachers work long hours in stressful and challenging situations. At the primary level they seem to be vulnerable to many of the minor illnesses that their students bring with them to school. Keeping healthy by taking exercise and getting between six and a half and eight hours sleep a night are ways of counteracting this.
Adapted from The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jeremy Harmer 2007, Longman.

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TASK TO BE SUBMITTED TO YOUR TUTOR TASK 2 First, make notes on the following thinking about your teaching and perhaps other things in your life.: The aspects of this course I have been most interested in are Immediately after finishing this course I.. Over the next 6 months I . Over the next 5 years I 1. Using the notes you make and any other relevant information, write a short report to us (300 words) saying what you have enjoyed on the course, how you see yourself developing over the next 5 years and what areas of your teaching life you would especially like to concentrate on. 2. Keep a copy - looking at it from time to time may remind you of your promises to yourself. Goodbye and the very best of luck.

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Copyright INTESOL Worldwide 2009

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