Hello ExamSeekers,

The past few Fridays, I’ve been posting about the CELTA Course. Last Friday, more specifically, I talked about the CELT-P (Certificate in English Language Teaching – Primary). The CELT-P and the CELT-S are different versions of the CELTA Course (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults).

While the CELTA Course is a course focused on preparing teachers to teach adults, the CELT-P  is an online teaching qualification with teaching practice for primary school EFL teachers working with learners aged 6-12. And the CELT-S is for secondary school EFL teachers working with learners aged 11-18.

I have already posted a text talking about the differences between the CELTA-YLE, CELT-P, and CELT-S. Take a look.

One of the most important aspects of a Certificate in English Language Teaching Course (CELTA, CELT-P, or CELT-S) is the Lesson Planning. When taking these courses, you learn how to prepare a functional and complete Lesson Plan for Receptive Skills, and for Productive Skills (Writing and Speaking).

There are some differences between a Lesson Plan for adult classes and a Lesson Plan for young learners classes. In this blog post, I will focus on the Lesson Plan for adults used in the CELTA Course, which can be used in your regular classes, as well.

There are basically 5 steps to prepare a proper Lesson Plan:

• Part 1: Describe the lesson (add information about the type of lesson, number of students, time, etc.);
• Part 2: Language Analysis (write about the language you will use in class – vocab/grammar);
• Part 3: Procedures / Steps (write how you will develop the lesson dividing it into stages, grouping, and timing);
• Part 4: Board Plan (preplan your board to keep it organized);
• Part 5: Handouts (prepare the material you will use in class).

Today, I’m talking about the third step: Procedures / Steps.

As I mentioned in the previous CELTA Lesson Plan posts, I was teaching a Listening Lesson based on authentic material. Students were supposed to watch a video called Travel Tips: Real Discounts on Airfare Found by Sonia Gil and grasp information from it.

So this is the first part of my procedures:

The first step is writing the Lead-in, which, as you can see, focuses on sensitizing students to the topic. You can, if this is your first lesson of the day, give them a warm-up. I usually try to make the warm-up related to the lead-in, but it’s not mandatory. Actually, there is a post differentiating the warm-up from the lead-in. Take a look.

So you need to write the procedures, the grouping, the timing, and the anticipated difficulties and solutions.

Remember that a Lesson Plan is not something that you prepare for you only. You use it as a guide for yourself to teach better, but it is also a guide for the teacher who will replace you in case you need to be absent. So make sure you use clear language, and that it is well instructed and clean.

So as you can see, I decided to tell my students I would travel and I needed some tips. Then I allowed them some time to think about the tips they would give me. I decided it would be a PW (pair work) and that it would last 7 minutes. Remember that lead-ins should take very little time from your lesson.

Whenever writing a step, you should anticipate problems and bring the solutions, which should be written down as well.

After that, I wrote the Pre-teach vocabulary stage, which facilitates listening for gist and detail. In this stage, you have to refer to the language analysis sheet. It shouldn’t take much of your class either. I believe that this stage takes up to ten minutes. The grouping, in this case, is teacher-student: you are pre-teaching the vocabulary.

As you could see, the language was clear and direct, I used imperatives: “do this”, “tell that”, etc. I also used abbreviations whenever possible, like S/Ss (students) and ECBD (Elicit, Clarify, Drill, Board).

Now, let’s go to the real deal: Listening for Gist and Listening for Detail:

If you want to provide students with an opportunity to understand details of the passage (listening for detail), you need to offer them the opportunity to listen for general comprehension (listening for gist) first.

In these two stages, I not only wrote the procedures, as you can see, but I also wrote the INSTRUCTIONS the teacher should give and the ICQ (Instructions Checking Questions), with the expected answer.

By having the instructions and the ICQs written down, you avoid a high TTT. Moreover, you have all your words planned to prevent any possible confusion.

Another aspect you should notice is that I also wrote down my answers in a lighter color. By doing so, I find them quickly, and I am prepared for my students’ answers. I can also focus my attention on the students watching the video instead of paying attention to the video itself.

The grouping, in this case, is individual, they are listening to the recording quietly. Since students have to write down their answers, you should plan the timing for a little longer than the recording. As you can see, I planned 5-6 min in my listening for gist stage and 10 min for my listening for detail stage.

Now the last stage can take longer because it’s the production time. In the Follow-up, you provide students with an opportunity to react to the lesson’s topic and discuss it. It is an excellent time to finish the lesson connecting all the stages.

You can choose to let them talk in groups or in pairs, and the instructions are short and clear. In this stage, I always add as an anticipated problem the possibility of having extra time, which can be solved with changing pairs.

Well, these were my procedures/stages for this lesson. It was not the best lesson I taught, but it is an example for you to get inspired. Make sure you follow the lesson plan watching Sonia Gil’s video:

Sonia Travels – Travel Tips: Real Discounts on Airfare Found!!!

I’d love to hear your comments about this lesson. So please, leave a comment down below saying if you liked it, or how differently you would teach this lesson, or even that you used my CELTA lesson plan, to say if it worked or not!

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Have a great week,
Patricia Moura