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British Council

Teaching English: How to Plan a Great Lesson

British Council via FutureLearn

Overview

Improve your English lesson planning and explore teaching with technology

Effective lesson planning will help your English students get the most from your classes.

On this teaching English course, you will look at four professional practices, share your own experiences, and apply what you’ve learnt to your CPD.

As you explore the key components of lesson planning, you’ll learn the importance of relationship-building and using technology to engage and support your students.

You’ll also learn the best ways to manage your lessons and make the most of any teaching resources available to you.

This course is designed for English language teachers around the world who want to improve their teaching methods and lesson planning.

You could be teaching at a primary, secondary, or higher education level.

Syllabus

  • Understanding learners
    • Getting started
    • Getting to know your learners
    • Motivating learners and getting them talking
    • Involving learners through differentiation
    • Review
  • Planning lessons and courses
    • Planning ahead
    • Aims and stages
    • Task: lesson observation
    • Adapting materials and planning for differentiation
    • Review
  • Managing the lesson
    • Introducing and practising language
    • Multilingual approaches
    • Alone, in pairs or in groups?
    • Review
  • Managing resources
    • What's available?
    • Using images and realia
    • Integrating ICT
    • Using the board
    • Review and next steps

Taught by

Claire Ross

Reviews

4.8 rating, based on 375 Class Central reviews

4.8 rating at FutureLearn based on 112 ratings

Start your review of Teaching English: How to Plan a Great Lesson

  • Anonymous
    This course has greatly been of help to me. i enjoy each step to the full. It greatly helped me to see areas i have not tried enough as a teacher and it has also shown me how to teach with a difference. you can't go wrong with Future learn courses. they are so reach and loaded.
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous is taking this course right now.

    I have participated in several courses online, in different platforms, as Coursera, Edx, in Universities as Yale or Harvard, and in Future Learn I have had the best experience. Because, you send weekly our reminders. This particular course has been so...
  • Anonymous
    The most remarkable aspect about this course is that it is eminently practical. First of all you are introduced on the idea of approaching your students taking into account their different needs, interests, circumstances, ages, etc., in order to create...
  • Anonymous
    I've enjoyed this course and the most thing I like about it is the videos of real lessons in real class and their feedbacks. Also, the reflective journal is something I would like to try because I used to do it and evaluate my work, but not in a written way.

    I have a prevoius knowledge of most of the techniques in the course till now, but it's always a good thing to refresh your memory and meet people who share their experiences and opinions with you.

    Thank you for your efforts and for all pdfs, links and apps that you shared with us.

  • Anonymous
    This course became a real good new start to be back into teaching after a pause with my own children. I could find here many new ideas and tools for teaching, useful links for teaching resourses, interesting lessons videos and further discussion with...
  • Anonymous
    Even on the halfway I surely say thank you for this course! As I had some break in my teaching practice staying with my own kids I started feeling unconfident in my teaching knowledge and needed some inspiration for moving forward. Now I already have it, I'm again sure that I definitely made a right choice of profession. There are many usefull and interesting articles, videos, teaching matelials and collegues comments. I save all the information for my further lessons. It's always great to communicate with teachers from different countries, read about their ideas and to watch lesson videos so I can think it over and get my own experience.
  • Anonymous
    I've been teaching English for a number of years, but I decided to take this course because I felt I was losing my motivation and getting into a bit of a rut. My progress has been slow, but at the halfway stage I'm happy to report that a lot of my assumptions and beliefs about lesson planning have been challenged, especially as regards the scheme of work for the whole course, the aims and stages of a lesson and the use of coursebooks. It's also great to be able to compare notes with colleagues from different parts of the world, and I'm looking forward to putting what I've learned into practice next year.
  • Anonymous
    Hello! I'm Sagir from Bangladesh. My teaching career is not very long. Hardly 2 and a half years. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have joined during the COVID-19 pandemic. After joining the school, I didn't get a chance to take class for 17 months....
  • Anonymous
    I really appreciate this course, I'm new in teaching and I finished this course with a notebook full of notes and a lot of useful links, pdf's and app's to help me while I'm teaching.

    The information was clear and easy to understand, and I'm really thankful for all the activities ideas that now I could use.

    Also the commentary section with other teachers around the world and the active work made by Suzanne pinning important coments or answering them was really helpful.
  • Teresa Kelly
    I am an experienced ESOL teacher who has returned to teaching after a break. This course has been invaluable in helping me transition back into English language teaching. It is very detailed and with a variety of teaching/engagement methods.
    I would highly recommend this course to both new and experienced ESOL teachers who want to offer the best expereince to their learners, and also be confident and successful language teachers.
  • Anonymous
    Very enjoyable course! I particularly like further reading articles. Carefully chosen resources and wonderful teaching ideas from other experienced teachers. Thank you so much!
  • Profile image for Baldana Turmaganbet
    Baldana Turmaganbet
    I really enjoyed taking this course. I analyzed myself and studied with different teachers. There were also useful links where I could find materials for all occasions.
  • Anonymous
    Я не вчитель початківець, але з задоволенням проходжу цей курс. На мою думку в цьому курсі кожен вчитель знайде для себе багато корисного. Адже завжди корисно спостерігати за роботою інших педагогів та черпати корисні ідеї.
  • Anonymous
    The course is the best course with so many interesting videos and articles I have ever come across. There are many free books to be downloaded for giving vast knowledge about different topics. The realy a great one which helps me to change my view about planning lessons for classroom teaching. This is a real guide to lesson plan for day to day teaching.
  • Ana De Pretto
    I only have to thank you for this stunning course!!! Congratulations Team and The British Council!!!!
  • Anonymous
    Loved the course! A lot of things which I learnt on my CELTA curse was on here. It was the perfect course to refresh my skills as I had a long career break. Lots of videos of teachers teaching in live classrooms which really added lot of value. Highly recommend if you're starting out , taken a long or have no professional training in teaching.
  • Rosine Astolfi
    This is the course I have been dreaming about for long. And there it is. I tell you, it's well shaped, there are many examples, teachers pop over regularly. Resources can be uploaded and you have access to padlet wall and to the B.Council website freely and to webinars. Everything you need is there to your next great lesson. See you soon. R.A.
  • Anonymous
    This is an excellent course - very helpful for anyone planning and delivering English lessons. It is good that the course educators interact with the participants.
    In order to make full use of the course, including following links requires more time than suggested - perhaps alter the time required or make the course longer than 4 weeks?
  • Anonymous
    I really like this course.And,I found it useful for every teacher who wants to well-organise their own lesson plans.Many factors that should be taken into account are also mentioned in more details.And the last but not least is that there are nice resources in each Module .
  • Anonymous
    I´ve started this course with few knowledge about teaching English and I've just finished the course and it blew my mind with bright ideas, concepts and above all a lot of good practices and advices given by colleagues spread around the world. It was an astonishing experience and I am pretty sure it will help me to be a better teacher. Thanks everybody - teachers, colleagues for sharing your time with us!

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