Planning tasks in a lesson

How to make lessons more manageable?

How to provide support throughout a lesson?

Young learners often act like they’ve understood just because they want to please their teacher. So we need to be very clear about the learning objectives of each task. 

Young learners'  motivation comes from three main sources: 

• enjoyment
• understanding 
• successful completion

If your lesson includes the following points, then you are probably going to have an enjoyable, clearly defined lesson that will provide stimulating learning opportunities for your learners:

•  clear objectives
• variety of activities
• relevance to learners’ own experience
• logic (everything makes sense)
• cohesion (good links between stages of the lesson)
• flow (smooth progress from one stage to another)
•  balance

A teacher should always bear in mind that a lesson plan should can clear learning objectives; that a teacher should use activities of different types and to chose topics that are relevant to our learners. While planning, a teacher should build a balance between logic, cohesion and natural flow. 

Clear learning objectives means that we know what we want the children to go away with at the end of the lesson. If we know them, we can divide a lesson into parts, which will enable us to provide support for our learners. 

One way to divide a lesson is to use the following three stages:

• preparation stage - a quick revision of the language. Brainstorming activity. You think about the language your learners will need ad you make activities based on this language

• main task stage - giving clear instructions. The use of a demonstration in open class to show learners what to do and how. Monitoring. Providing support. 

• post-task stage - integrating other skills (reading, speaking; doing extension activities). 

It guides learners too by creating a step-by-step approach.

Why monitoring is important?

• You can check whether your learners are doing the task correctly.
• You check whether they have understood the task.
• You can provide some hep for certain students.
• You can check whether your learners need some more time.

What is the purpose of the post-task stage?

• You can incorporate other skills.
• It’s a way to exploit the task topic further.

Examples of activities for each stage:

Preparation stage

• Revising hobbies vocabulary
• Brainstorming ideas about things they do at weekends

Main task stage

• Completing a diary about their weekend activities
• Using the present tense to tell each other about their weekend activities

Post-task stage

• Making a poster about favourite activities
• Inventing a new hobby or activity

Before you plane any stage, think about these key factors:

• Stage (e.g. preparation, main task or post-task) - When and what you are going to do
• Aim - Why you are doing it
• Procedure - How you are going to do it
• Interaction - Who will do it
• Timing - How long you will dedicate to it

Principle of the lesson that help us to make it logical:

• Develop a single activity at a time. 
• Build on what the learners know at each stage.
• Adjust the difficulty factor at each stage, e.g. keep a balance between language difficulty and task difficulty.
• In general, move from receptive to productive – listening to speaking; reading to writing.  

Links:

http://www.cambridgeenglishteacher.org/courses/details/18777/teaching-primary-learners-communicatively