Describing Lesson Procedures
One of the CELTA planning criteria (4e) is that you describe the procedure of the lesson in sufficient detail. What is sufficient you might ask? Well, sufficient detail would mean that someone reading the plan would have enough information to be able to deliver the lesson.
This is a good level of detail to aim for in the procedures. In reality, we may rarely achieve that standard. However, if you would one day like to become a manager or materials writer, being able to write procedures that other teachers can follow is clearly beneficial. It may also be expected of you in some teaching contexts to write such procedures for colleagues to cover your lessons if you are sick.
Instructions
The main thing that is worth including in the procedure is the instructions that you will give to students. This should include any way of checking the instructions (such as ICQs). I will write a post about giving instructions in the near future, but in short, these should be:
- concise,
- use simple language, and
- framed in the imperative.
The above points do depend somewhat on the level of the students. High levels may be able to cope with indirect or nested questions and conditional or cleft sentences, while lower levels would require simpler instructions.
Some may also argue that giving instructions at just above the students’ current level of understanding could form part of the comprehensible input (Krashen) of the lesson. However, unless the instructions are or contain the target language, in my opinion, it is good practice to simplify instructions even for the highest level groups. There are other opportunities in the lesson for roughly-graded input, and generally all of the students being able to do the activities you have planned is a necessary prerequisite for an effective lesson.
Gestures
Lower levels and young learners may benefit a lot from the use of gesture along with your instruction. Higher levels and older students benefit too, but the gestures tend to become smaller for these students.
It may be useful to include a description of key gestures you want to make to accompany instructions. For example, you might note that you are going to “chest” a worksheet (i.e. hold it next to your chest) or that you will cup your hand to your ear to emphasise the need for students to listen.
Models
As well as your instructions, you may also wish to script any models that you are going to provide. I have seen many teachers write in their plans “tell students about the time I…” However, if you do this, you will likely find yourself searching for words and giving a less than ideal model.
You may not need to script the complete model, as that would then end up being an inauthentic listening exercise. Instead, you can make notes of the key points that you should include within your model.
Answers
It’s very likely that at some points during the lesson you will have an exercise for students that has specific answers. It can be helpful for you to include these in your procedure. This way you don’t need to go looking for them at the end of an activity.
You might also include other important notes that you wish to cover during feedback.
Problems and Solutions
Some CELTA centres use a lesson plan template that asks you to anticipate problems with each stage and suggest solutions. Although there are separate criteria in the CELTA 5 for problems and solutions, you may need to include this in your procedures too.
Materials
It should also be clear in your procedures or elsewhere in your plan what materials relate to each stage. If you are using a presentation tool such as Powerpoint, a simple way to do this would be to include the slide numbers in the procedure.
Micro-staging
When planning any stage in a lesson, it can often be broken down into several micro-stages. For example, a lead in might involve you telling a story about something which happened to you, students telling each other a similar story, and then content feedback where one or two students feedback to the class.
This stage therefore has three micro-stages. Your procedures should describe each of these, although some parts will need more explanation or instructions than others.
Beyond CELTA
As mentioned above, you will probably not write plans anywhere near as detailed as you do for CELTA for most of your teaching career. However, if you want to design materials for other teachers to use or if you go into academic management, you might find yourself writing such detail descriptions.
Procedures are something that are worth paying attention to. You can watch two teachers do fundamentally the same activity, but you will find differences in success can come down to subtle changes in the procedure each teacher followed.
You will establish certain routines that you like to do with students, and your procedures for doing these will likely become habitual with time. Where these work well that can be a positive, but you should also remain vigilant to spot where your established habits might need some tweaking.
