So, you've got the job and you're now an ESL teacher! Congratulations! As your first day of teaching draws nearer and nearer, you are wondering what you will teach and how you will teach it. A good lesson needs good planning. A good lesson needs a solid lesson plan. Your lesson plans ensures that several things happen in your lesson:

1. You have a definite language point to teach. Your lesson plan should be based around one language point.

2. What games and activities you are going to use. Certain activities work for some language points, but not others. Make sure your games are also age/level appropriate.

3. Your ESL lesson should have a purpose, it should keep building. Your students will be lost if your lesson jumps from here to there as they won't be able to follow where you are going.

4. A lesson plan acts as a warning against possible difficulties in teaching the new language, such as pronunciation. Because you have your lesson plan, you can allocate extra time or find great activity that helps to overcome the problem.

5. Creating lesson plans saves you time. Because you will likely teach the same lesson more than once, you can use your lesson plan over and over again.

6. Using lesson plans generally mean that you are following the same pattern for all your lessons. This helps to let your students know what's coming next, so they can focus more or learning and not what is going to happen next.

There are six of the strongest reasons as to why you should create an ESL lesson plan to make your classes a success.

Ok, so, you’ve decided that making a lesson plan for your classes is a good idea. Now what? A lesson plan can’t include just anything, heck that’s why you should us a lesson plan: it’s tells you what and how to teach!

The four bare essential elements that are never left out of a good lesson plan are: a warmer, review, new language and fun! Here’s why:

1. Warmer – A warmer is SO important because it sets the mood for the rest of the lesson. Warmers are essential because they help your students:
1. To relax and feel comfortable in the classroom
2. Have fun
3. Realize that “everyone is in the same boat”
4. Learn a little about you and their classmates
5. Gain confidence
6. Get a feel for how the rest of the class will be like
   
   
2. Review – a review helps your students to retain the language they learnt in the last lesson. Essentially a review should be:
1. Fun
2. Short (roughly 5-10 minutes, depending on how long your lesson is)
3. As student orientated as possible. IE the teacher should have minimal involvement.
   
   
3. New Language – This is what your lesson plan is based around and will take up the majority of the lesson. Introducing new language follows three main steps:
1. Presentation – this is where you explain the new language. It’s important that you try to elicit as much of the language as possible.
2. Practice – This is where the language is “drilled” into the students. This step contains teacher controlled drills.
3. Follow-up – This is where students now get to use the language they’ve just learnt in a fun and interesting way. This activity should allow as much student to student interaction as possible.
   
   
4. In summary, new language should:
1. Be introduced with a concept that the students will understand and without, where possible, referring to the written word.
2. Be elicited from the students, where possible.
3. Follow a structured presentation method so that your students can follow where you are going.
4. Allow for as much student to student interactivity as possible. Sure they teacher takes centre stage when drilling the language, but when it comes time for you follow-up activity your students should be in the driver’s seat.
   
   
5. Fun – Although not an actual “step” in your lesson plan, fun should be incorporated in as much of the lesson as possible. Here’s why:
1. Your students will show a greater willingness to learn if they are having fun.
2. Your students will be better behaved because they are not bored.
3. Greater participation leads to greater language retention, which makes you look better!
4. Better word of mouth - the more fun your lessons are, the more likely word will spread about how great a teacher you are!

There’s the core of you lesson plan. In the next section we’ll take a look at some great tips to enhance your lessons.

In this section we’ll take a look at ways that you can improve you basic lesson plan. These tips can help your good lessons become great lessons! These tips, by themselves, cannot make a lesson plan. You should always use the steps outlined in the previous section to build the foundation of you lesson plan, these tips are like the sizzle to the sausage!

There are several considerations to take into account when developing you lesson content. Here are the main things that you should consider:

· Age – how old are your students? Are your activities appropriate for the age that you are teaching?

· Ability/level – what do you students already know? Are you building a foundation of knowledge of just teaching a bit from here and there?

· Classroom environment – what resources are available to you? How many students are there? How big is the classroom? Can you take the students outside if you need to?

· Sensitive topics – be aware that you are teaching to students from a different culture to you own (usually) and they may have different values and beliefs.

Why use games? I’ve mentioned using games a fair bit in this article, besides being fun, why is it a good idea to use games?

• They provide a lot a language repetition.
• They help to consolidate language points/vocabulary

However, not all games are good for all classes, when choosing games you should consider:

• Age/level appropriateness – will the students be able to understand the game or even enjoy it?
• Safety – don’t risk your student’s safety for the sake of a fun lesson.
• Number of students – some games only work with a certain number of students.

Does it flow?

• The whole point of a lesson plan is so that at any point in your lesson you can quickly glance at where you’re up to and what’s coming up next. If you can’t make sense of it, then you’ve wasted your time planning a worthless lesson plan and possibly the student’s time because you may have missed something from your lesson.
• Lesson plans take the guess work out of calculating the length of your lessons. This allows you to include as much of the content as you had intended.

Why should you use worksheets in the classroom?

• Worksheets help to consolidate learning as well as providing an opportunity for student to student interactivity.
• They can also help you gauge how well a student is doing as you never know what kind of “help” they’ve received at home with their homework.

This article has seen use learn why we should develop ESL lesson plans, the core structure of a lesson plan, as well as tips to help you make your lessons great. This is only the beginning, in the next section we will reveal a bunch of resources for you to use when creating new lessons.

Enjoy!

Resources:
Simply ESL! – Here you’ll find a great range of ESL resources for teachers and students, including lesson plans, forums, newsletters, learning ideas and much more. Come and see what Simply ESL has to offer today!

In ESL Jobs – “In ESL Jobs” has ESL job listings from all over the world! Get notified of new jobs instantly with our easy-to-use Job Alerts feature! Find your next ESL job at In ESL Jobs.