Stage Aims
If you haven’t read it yet, you may want to read my post on staging a lesson before reading this one. In this post, I will go through some of the common stages used in CELTA lesson plans and some possible stage aims.
As a general rule however, the purpose of a stage aim is to identify how a stage contributes to the overall lesson. If you’re struggling to think of stage aims, it’s quite possible you are thinking of your stages in isolation, and not how they build towards later stages, or consolidate the learning in earlier ones.
Lead ins
Pretty much any type of lesson you do is going to start with a lead in. This is for a number of reasons, some of which are purely practical, and others which are pedagogical.
One very practical reason to have a lead in is that you are always going to have some students who are late. I have heard stories of teachers who lock their doors the moment the lesson is due to start, but I’ve never actually met one. I think they might be an urban myth. For most of us, students trickling in late is a reality, and a lead in occupies the students who were on time while those who were late haven’t missed anything too important.
A lead in is also something of a warmer. These are not necessarily the same thing, but what they have in common is that they allow students to warm up before the real lesson begins. The key difference is that a lead in is thematically linked to the rest of the lesson, whereas a warmer doesn’t actually need to be.
The flip side to allowing students to warm up is that you as a teacher can see who is present in the lesson. When I say present, I mean not just physically, but also in spirit. You can sense who is having a good or bad day, but also (when teaching online) who is having connectivity issues.
Perhaps the most obvious or important reason to have a lead in is to set the context for the lesson. This then has the effect of activating the students’ schemata, which is a fancy way of saying that it brings to mind what they already know about a subject.
While I have mentioned a number of reasons to do a lead in, it is the latter ones that you will most likely give as your stage aims in your lesson plan, i.e.
- to activate schemata
- to set up the context of …
Clarification
Regardless of the lesson framework that you use, you are likely to have a stage in your lesson that deals with new language. Among other names, this could be called:
- Presentation (in a PPP framework)
- Teach (in a TTT framework)
- Pre-Teach (in a receptive skills framework)
- Language focus (in a product writing or TBL framework)
The key point is that this stage is the main point that new language is either being introduced or highlighted from a text. In isolation, this stage has the purpose of enhancing a student’s lexical or grammatical knowledge or awareness. However, as mentioned above, we do need to consider how such a stage fits with the wider lesson framework.
A pre-teach stage in a listening or reading lesson should be to deal with ‘blocking’ vocabulary (i.e. unknown vocabulary that could prevent students from doing the reading or listening tasks. In a product writing lesson, language is highlighted from a model in the hope that they will be able to use the same language when they produce their own version.
In a PPP framework, the language often comes without context. However, the aim is still that students will use this language in the productive task at the end. The teach stage of a TTT lesson also aims to clarify language that will be useful in a final productive task, although what exactly will be clarified depends on the first test or task stage.
Reading and Listening
Typically for a reading or listening lesson on the CELTA, you are going to have two separate reading and listening stages, each practising a different strategy or “sub-skill”. There are three stages that you might use:
- Reading/listening for gist
- Reading/listening for specific information
- Reading/listening for detail
If the stage indicates that it is for gist, then the goal is for students to have some overall understanding of the text. For specific information, the goal is to pick out particular pieces of information from a text such as a time, price, date, or name of something. Detailed understanding means a deeper level of comprehension that might require students to read ‘between the lines’ and make inferences.
A very common sequence for gist tasks involves a prediction stage in which students try to guess something about the text before they read or listen to it and confirm whether they were correct or not. In this case the prediction task sets up a reason for students to read or listen, while the reading or listening task has the aim of confirming their prediction.
The above assumes that a reading or listening stage occurs in a lesson as part of a receptive skills framework, but these are not the only lessons where such stages appear. In a text-based lesson, a reading or listening text is used as a vehicle to introduce grammar or vocabulary. In a product writing or speaking lesson, such a stage will be to introduce a model for students to base their own production on.
Controlled Practice
After a clarification stage, there will often be a controlled practice stage. The aim of this stage will be to provide practice with new vocabulary or grammar with a focus on using or producing the language accurately. This may focus the students on one or more of meaning, form or pronunciation.
Freer Practice or Productive Tasks
Many of the lesson frameworks finish with a productive task. This can still have different purposes, although the general aim of the stage is to provide an opportunity for students to use, in a more spontaneous way than controlled practice, any new language that has been covered in the lesson. This stage therefore provides fluency practice.
For many lesson frameworks, this is also where the evidence that the lesson aim has been achieved. However, some lesson frameworks also include productive tasks earlier in the lesson such as TTT and TBL.
For these productive tasks that come earlier in the lesson, they play something of a diagnostic role within the lesson. For the teacher, these tasks allow you assess the students strengths and weaknesses in the task, allowing you to adapt your teaching to the students you have. While the student benefits from having an opportunity to practise their fluency, they may also notice some of their own weaknesses from such a task, which may provide motivation to address those areas.
Other Stage Aims
In this post I’ve gone through a number of the common stages that appear in the lesson frameworks and tried to explain how they fit with the overall lesson shape. There are stages that I have not mentioned, but the key to identifying stage aims is to understand how that stage contributes to the wider lesson.
Beyond CELTA
It’s unlikely you will spend much time writing stage aims after your CELTA course has finished. However, you will likely use coursebooks, and understanding the sequence of activities they provide will help you to quickly plan lessons that are appropriate to the learners that you have. You may identify stages that do not feel relevant, or stages that you would like to add or adapt to better serve your students.
