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When you teach children, planning a lesson can be either fun and rewarding, or the most
frustrating experience you can imagine. It all depends on what you have to build on.
If you have a particular set of language items you want to teach, a basic lesson outline,
and lots of different activities, then planning the lesson is fun. If you lack any of
those three things, lesson planning can be very frustrating. Questions like What should
I teach? What should I do first? or How should I teach it? can plague you every time.
What should I teach?
The first thing a teacher needs to decide is WHAT she wants to teach. What do kids need
to learn in a foreign language? If you're using a textbook, a lot of the material may
already be there. If not, here are a couple of pointers to keep in mind when deciding
what you're going to teach:
1. Vocabulary:
Include concrete vocabulary items in a kid's environment, grouped by category, because
vocabulary is easier to remember that way.
2. Functional Dialogs:
These are things kids say every day (aisatsu) like: Good morning! Thank you. You're
welcome. I'm home. That's not fair. Let's play.
3. Listening:
Kids learning a foreign language can understand more than they can say. (In fact,
we ALL can, even in our native language!) Do listening activities that kids don't have
to say or repeat. Use listening to extend their knowledge, as well as to put as much
English as possible into their heads.
4. Grammar:
Simple, useful structures that kids can substitute vocabulary items into and make their
own sentences. Include both statements as well as questions and answers.
5. Phonics/Reading/Writing:
Kids learning English as a foreign language need lots of support, especially because
the sounds, as well as the forms of the written letters, are often new. Teach sounds
that are similar together (like p and b or s and z). Teach writing letters by similar
strokes (like C and G or a, d and g). Both ways make sounds and letters easier to
master.
6. Culture:
Children are fascinated by what other kids do in other countries. Learning about
other cultures is a bridge to internationalization and to an appreciation that English
is truly a language spoken by real people (besides the teacher!) Kids' holidays are a
natural cultural item to share. Another is everyday cultural points like shrugging
shoulders or shaking hands.
The Lesson Plan
Everyone needs a basic lesson plan. You need one to make your lessons easy to plan.
The students need one to provide regularity and structure to their learning. The
parents need one if they are to have confidence in the teacher. In a school, your
supervisor needs one to give a substitute on the day you can't be there.
What does a basic lesson plan consist of? It has to include a lot of things: checking
and assigning homework, reviewing previously taught material, introducing new material,
and practice, practice, and more practice. It should also include a warm-up, to get
kids started in the lesson, and a wrap-up, to send them off feeling good. How do you
get all those things into a single 50-minute lesson?
When we wrote the lesson plans for SuperKids, this was the basic plan we used:
Warm-up (Review) |
5 minutes |
Homework check (Review) |
10 minutes |
Introduce new material |
5-10 minutes |
Practice new material |
5-20 minutes |
Assign homework |
5 minutes |
Wrap-up |
5 minutes |
TOTAL |
50 minutes |
Let's start with the warm-up. Why do one? Well, some kids come to my classes straight
from playing soccer or practicing a unicycle. Others come right from school or juku.
Still others were at home playing video games. Wherever they were, you can bet they
weren't using English! And, except for the time spent doing their homework, English
hasn't been a part of their lives AT ALL since the last class. Some of those kids
need to be calmed down, others need to be pepped up – all need to have the English
parts of their brains activated. So, we do a warm-up. In a warm-up we're getting the
kids ready for English class by reviewing, in a fun way, something they have already
learned. Warm-ups are quick, easy and enjoyable. Need an idea? How about trying:
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Partner Search |
Use two sets of cards you want to review. These can be pictures, written words,
lines of dialogs or any combination. Give each student a card, making sure that at
least two students have the same card. Students search for the other person with the
same card. They may not show anyone their cards. They find their partner by saying the
name of the card or a line of a dialog in a loud voice as they walk around.
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After the warm-up, we check the homework. SuperKids homework is simple to do,
includes lots of fun activities, and is based on listening. It practices the material
introduced in the previous class, so is a perfect time for reviewing. Kids name the
pictures or do the actions they heard and circled for homework. Or they tell what color
they used to color a picture. Or they name language items in the same order they
connected dots. Or they say the dialog associated with a picture. Sometimes we even
have them name or do the pictures they didn't circle. Good homework that follows the
curriculum makes for easy review.
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