Planning effective ESL lessons for the upcoming year: Tips and ideas for teachers

Sam Colley
Teacher and primary school students colouring
Reading time: 4 minutes

As the new year approaches, it's the perfect time to reflect on our teaching practices and plan engaging, effective lessons for our English as a Second Language (ESL) students. Thoughtfully crafted lesson plans can make a significant difference in the learning outcomes and engagement levels of your students. Whether you're teaching young children, teenagers, or adults, the principles of effective lesson planning remain consistent. Here are some ideas, hints and tips to help you create dynamic and successful ESL lessons for students of all ages.

Start with clear learning objectives

Begin each lesson with clear, achievable objectives. What do you want your students to learn by the end of the lesson? Objectives provide a roadmap for both you and your students, ensuring that everyone is focused and aware of the goals. For example, an objective might be "Students will be able to use past tense verbs to describe their weekend activities." Clear objectives provide direction and help you measure student progress.

Incorporate a variety of activities

To cater to different learning styles and keep students engaged, incorporate a mix of teaching methods and activities. Here are a few ideas:

  • Listening: Use audio recordings, songs, or podcasts to improve listening skills.
  • Speaking: Organize pair or group discussions, role-plays, or presentations to enhance speaking abilities.
  • Reading: Provide a variety of texts such as articles, short stories, or dialogues.
  • Writing: Assign tasks like journal entries, essays, or creative writing exercises.
  • Homework activities: For something outside of the classroom, a nature walk or a recipe can be used to help learn specific vocabulary.

Use authentic materials

Authentic materials—such as newspapers, menus, brochures and videos—expose students to real-world language and contexts. These materials can make lessons more interesting and relevant, helping students see the practical application of their language skills. Even better, they’re everywhere, so easy to find. Here are some more suggestions for how to select and use authentic materials in your English language teaching.

Integrate technology

Teachers are already used to leveraging technology to enhance lessons utilizing online resources, language learning apps and interactive platforms to create a dynamic learning environment. Why not take this a step further by using AI to create your own resources. Take a look at our blog on How to make the most of AI in the classroom for some more ideas.
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Tips for planning effective ESL lessons
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Foster a supportive learning environment

Create a classroom atmosphere where students feel comfortable making mistakes and taking risks. Mistakes are a natural part of the learning process, so ensure that your students are comfortable experimenting with the language. Encourage participation and praise effort, not just accuracy. A supportive environment boosts confidence and motivates students to practice their language skills.

Differentiate instruction

Recognize that your students have diverse needs and proficiency levels. Differentiate your instruction by providing varied tasks and materials that cater to different abilities. For instance, while advanced students work on a challenging reading comprehension task, beginners might focus on foundational vocabulary building.

Incorporate cultural elements

Language learning is intertwined with cultural understanding. Introduce cultural elements into your lessons to provide context, enrich the learning experience and deepen understanding. Celebrate cultural diversity by discussing traditions, holidays and customs from English-speaking countries as well as your students' home countries. This approach fosters cultural awareness and appreciation.

Use games and interactive activities

Games and interactive activities are excellent for making learning fun and memorable. Consider incorporating language games like Bingo, Pictionary, or Jeopardy. These activities not only reinforce language skills but also promote teamwork and communication.

TV game shows like the British program Countdown, are a great source of ideas for ESL games. In Countdown, players take turns selecting a consonant or a vowel to produce nine random letters. They then use these letters to make the longest word they can in a set time. It can be a bit of a challenge, so it’s best played with higher levels.

Provide regular feedback

Regular feedback is essential for student development. Offer constructive feedback on assignments and in-class activities, highlighting strengths and areas for improvement. Encourage self-assessment and peer feedback to help students become more reflective and autonomous learners.

Plan for continuous assessment

Continuous assessment allows you to monitor student progress and adapt your teaching strategies accordingly. Use a variety of assessment methods, including quizzes, oral presentations, written assignments and informal observations. This comprehensive approach ensures a well-rounded understanding of each student's progress.

Reflect and adjust

At the end of each lesson, take a moment to reflect on what worked well and what could be improved. Gather feedback from your students and use it to adjust your future lesson plans. Continuous reflection and adaptation are key to effective teaching.

Conclusion

Planning effective ESL lessons requires creativity, flexibility and a deep understanding of your students' needs. By setting clear objectives, incorporating diverse activities, using authentic materials, integrating technology, fostering a supportive environment, differentiating instruction, incorporating cultural elements, using games, providing regular feedback and planning for continuous assessment, you can create engaging and effective lessons for students of all ages.

As you plan for the upcoming year, remember that your enthusiasm and dedication are key to your students' success. Here's to a year of inspiring and impactful teaching.

If you're looking for some more ideas on lesson planning and keeping your students engaged, why not take a look at our blogs onÌýDesigning new learning experiences for your English language learners andÌýMind the gap in your English lesson planning.

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    7 ways to individualize your teaching

    By Andrew Walkley
    Reading time: 4 minutes

    There's no denying that tailoring your teaching to individual students is an effective strategy. However, many teachers struggle with finding the time to include teaching moments which address an individual learner's specific needs. So, what's the best way to create an individualized classroom? Andrew Walkley, co-author of Roadmap, explains the benefits of this approach and shares some techniques to ensure that every student gets the most out of your lessons.Ìý

    The best of both worlds?

    First of all, what does individualized teaching mean? It's the concept that students will learn most effectively when the activity is specific to their needs and the language they are using is appropriate for their level. This concept is sometimes seen in opposition to coursebooks and class-based learning, where students are all expected to follow the same syllabus. However, class syllabuses and coursebooks have the following benefits:

    • Providing students with common goalsÌý
    • Encouraging learners to follow an unfamiliar topic that then opens new doors of learning
    • The learning opportunities in peer-to-peer explanationÌý

    When we talk about individualized teaching in the classroom, we want to exploit the benefits of learning together while also providing opportunities for more individualized development. So, how can you, as a teacher, combine the two approaches?

    1. Involve students in choosing your route

    All classroom groups are different and made up of people from different age groups with distinct needs and interests. Roadmap can help in two ways:

    1. There is a fast and slow track. The fast track focuses on language input and speaking. The slow track has additional skills lessons at the back of the book that are thematically linked to the corresponding fast track lesson.Ìý
    2. Each lesson has a clear goal and final task. For shorter courses, get each student to choose three tasks they would definitely like to do. Based on the results, you can prioritize those lessons.

    At the start of the course, make a point of asking about students' learning priorities and then plan accordingly. Once you've completed an input and speaking lesson, you can ask the students if they want to further explore the topic through the skills lesson.

    2. Make use of tasks

    Open tasks, where students exchange their own ideas in a meaningful way, are a key part of individualized lessons. In essence, they are self-differentiating because each student will attempt to complete the task using whatever language they are able to use. In Roadmap, each of the main lessons ends with a clear task connected to a Global Scale of English (GSE) can-do statement. However, there are also lots of other speaking opportunities without a 'speaking' label (under vocabulary or reading, etc.), as well as the conversation that typically occurs in any lesson, all of which can be treated as open tasks.

    3. Give individualized feedback and then share it

    In a group setting, it's impossible to give individual feedback on every single task. However, you can give individual attention to different people throughout the lesson. Make yourself available to give students the language they need as it arises during an activity. Then, when they've completed the task, write some of these examples on the board, but leave a gap for the keywords. Elicit these keywords from other members of the class. If they can't get it, ask the student(s) you helped to explain the missing language. You might then repeat the task, but this time, pay attention to a new group.Ìý

    4. Check what vocabulary students know

    All coursebook writers and teachers make choices about what vocabulary to introduce to students. In the case of Roadmap we are guided by the GSE and teachers might like to experiment themselves using the GSE Teacher Toolkit. However, all students will have their own lexicons. You can individualize learning better by asking students to rate the words you aim to cover in a unit according to whether they know them or not. For example, 1 = it's completely new, 2 = the meaning is familiar but I don't use it, 3 = this is part of my productive vocabulary.Ìý

    5. Get students to create their own word lists and cards

    This knowledge will enable you to encourage students to focus on their individual vocabulary needs. They can reinforce learning by developing a word list or making flashcards using a web tool such as Quizlet. For new words they may have a word/collocation with an L1 translation.

    With familiar vocabulary, they could have cards with a keyword on one side and varied collocations or common examples on the other (also in English). It's worth setting aside some time in class to do this at the start of a course. If your students are engaged and motivated, it can become a regular discipline for learning new vocabulary.Ìý

    6. Ask more open questions about usage, not just meaning

    When we do vocabulary tasks from the course material in class, we can use open questions to individualize learning with the following two techniques. Firstly, as you go through the answers, rather than going in order 1 to 8, you can nominate people to give the answer that they're most unsure of and want to check. Secondly, we can ask the rest of the class open questions which focus on how words are used. For example, take these questions from different vocabulary exercises in Roadmap B1+:

    • What (other) things might you spill?
    • Why might a character in a series be killed off?
    • What (else) can you describe as reliable?
    • What can someone do to stay calm?Ìý

    You could also ask questions such as, "What's the opposite of staying calm?" or "What might you say if you spilled something?"

    When you ask these questions, you are checking meaning, but more importantly, you are also pushing students to reveal how well they know a word. Do they know the collocations of spill and reliable? Do they have the other language they might need to talk about the aspects of a TV series or help someone who is in a panic? You can then encourage students to choose how much of this potentially new language they want to add to their word lists.

    7. Provide open homework tasks and make time to share the results

    Homework is another opportunity to individualize learning. Give students a wide choice of tasks based on the material of the course or beyond, for example:

    • Choose any number of exercises they want to do from workbook materialÌý
    • Find and read one article they are interested in (in L1 or L2)
    • Write five things they want to learn how to say in English (perhaps using Google Translate)
    • Write up an interesting conversation they had in English (the conversation could be originally in L1 or L2)

    Whatever task they choose, the key is to dedicate some classroom time to discussing which homework task they did and why. Encourage them to explain their answers and what they learned through the task, and whether or not they would choose to do a similar task again.ÌýÌý

    For a more detailed introduction on how you can individualize your teaching, check out Andrew's webinar:Ìý