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British Council

Teaching English: How to Plan a Great Lesson

British Council via FutureLearn

This course may be unavailable.

Overview

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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 372 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
    It's a very interesting course whether you are a novel teacher trying to understand how to plan your lessons or you are a teacher who has been working for a while but needs to brush up on teaching methods. Educators are nice and competent, the material provided is useful and interesting and there are lots of videos that show real teachers in action. Sharing material and ideas with other participants is also a good opportunity to grow professionally. Highly recommended.
  • Anonymous
    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…
  • 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 c…
  • 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 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
    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…
  • Ana De Pretto
    I only have to thank you for this stunning course!!! Congratulations Team and The British Council!!!!
  • 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!
  • 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!
  • 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 wit…
  • Anonymous
    A great course. I recommend it to any teacher who wants to teach online. The tasks, links and resources provided in the course will be helpful during your career as an online teacher.
  • 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
    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
    I am a volunteer helping migrants learn English. It's a free class at a community centre and I have had no training or advice. It is difficult to plan lessons as we constantly have new arrivals and some speak virtually no English. This British Counc…
  • Anonymous
    The course is absolutely incredible and informative. I have learnt a lot. It offered me a systematic and practical way to gain knowledge regardingteachingEnglish.

    I like everything about it. It really broadened my horizons regarding planning lessons. I like the way in which they divid a lesson into stages and how they put aims to each stage. Moreover, I like the idea of adapting activities in the textbook to suit our learners.
    Finally, I would like to very much thank the instructors for their great work.
  • Anonymous
    I find this a practical course that helps explain Differentiation in simple terms. The examples provided and the video clips help to further support my understanding of DfL. It is certainly good to know that I don't have to prepare individual lessons for each student but that I can meet the needs of the students by scaffolding through questions etc so that learning needs are met.
    What I have learnt is that DfL happens when the teacher presents content in different ways, provides students with a variety of activities to internalise new knowledge, and also presents them with choices on how they display their learning.
  • 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
    The content of itself is fine. The issues I have with Futurelearn courses is the time they take and the time allowed. I have done a number of courses but am unlikely to do any more because this is a recurring issue. I work full time as a teacher so have to fit these courses in where I can. I have never found one that takes the time advertised. Those timings are unrealistic and spoil the overall experience.
  • Anonymous
    I would like the addition of an online live meeting at least one at the end of each week to share and exchange our ideas together with experts in the field of teaching. I am wondering whether it is possible to use teaching materials available at the…

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