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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 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
    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 was really helpful and practical, as it provides you with so many resources, and plans and ideas to use. I really enjoyed following through and reflecting on so many aspects concerning my teaching and planning.
  • 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…
  • 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.
  • 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
    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.
  • Anonymous
    I am following this course to refresh my knowledge as I plan going back to teaching after a long break. It has reminded me of many important aspects of teaching from the very general basics to rather specific tools that I can use to prepare for classes. Although it is named How to Plan a Great Lesson, the take-away is much broader as it lies on the foundations of teaching: knowing your students, differentiation, scaffolding, planning, modifying/adapting the course material, self-reflection. I would recommend this course as it really makes you consider where you stand and how you can improve on it, while, at the same time, offering plenty of advice and experience from other teachers from around the world.
  • 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
    A well-structured and informative course. I was glad to understand I was doing the right way in my teaching career as for lesson planning, anyway, I've learnt some new ideas and approaches to planning and have found a lot of useful resources.
  • Anonymous
    I definitely love British Council's work and everything that you have been doing in order to improve the teaching of English (as a Lingua Franca, maybe?).
    I was watching the videos within the tasks and I was amazed to see the range of countries you selected to show the points aimed. I was also wondering whether some of these classroom recordings could have been set up just for the sake of recording an example activity. Aren't there any kind of distractions in the classrooms? Students are always so engaged in the tasks? How would teachers deal not only with the teaching itself, but also managing the unexpected situations of a classroom?
  • 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'm totally enchanted for having included this course into my working materials because I have learned los of new tips in order to improve my organization at presenting new topics to my students. Love this course.

  • Anonymous
    I would highly recommend this course to both new and experienced teachers. Experienced teachers will brush up on the most important steps involved in lesson planning, while new teachers will find out all they need to know about great lesson planning. What I loved about the course is that planning a great lesson is broken down into essential steps. It is easy to progress through the course all the while absorbing incredibly useful information. The materials and videos of teachers and their classes are very informative, useful and most importantly practical.
  • Anonymous
    I would highly recommend this course to both new and experienced teachers. Experienced teachers will brush up on the most important steps involved in lesson planning, while new teachers will find out all they need to know about great lesson planning. What I loved about the course is that planning a great lesson is broken down into essential steps. It is easy to progress through the course all the while absorbing incredibly useful information. The materials and videos of teachers and their classes are very informative, useful and most importantly practical.

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