Making a lesson Plan: structuring and delivering an effective lesson.
Part A). Planning a lesson/ making plan:
1. Setting:
o Askari Kids College is an English medium school situated in Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan. Students’ dropout rate after grade ten is at bare
minimum; ninety-eight-percent of the students go on advanced levels of studies in colleges or academies to prepare for the A-Level (a Britishcurriculum based) examination for university entrance.
o This school is a private school; classes start at kindergarten and continue through grade ten. Course syllabi are based on a combination of textbooks and other educational resources. The medium of instruction for all courses is English, but English is also taught as daily subject in two
periods (forty-five minutes each).
o Classrooms are equipped with chalkboards, overhead projectors, screens, TVs, DVD players, and one desktop computer each.
2. Knowledge of students:
o The class is a homogenous group of thirty-students for grade-ten; Urdu is a first language of students.
o Most of the class is at a high-intermediate-level of English-language proficiency.
o The students are motivated, inspired and hard-working; parents’ literacy rate is very high, and is one of the reasons that encourage enthusiasm
among students to go to university.
3. Knowledge of the Syllabus:
o The teaching assignment is to teach English- for- Academic- Purpose for students of grade-ten.
o The English teacher is allowed to use course text-books, as well additional material, as long this material is relevant to the topics outlined in the
syllabus for grade-ten academic English.
o It is believed that the majority of students will go to university in the future, so this course is an important foundation-building course for English
skills.
o Students are looking to improve academic content knowledge and English-language skills, critical-thinking skills, critical analysis and writing skills.
o The lesson topic is the “ancient civilizations of the Indus Valley;” the richness of this content will encourage students to analyze the reasons for
abundance and decline in Indus Valley cities through class discussions, critical thinking, and formulating new ideas and concepts. As well, it will
enumerate multiple prospects that will help a student to improve language skills.
o Students have learned note-taking skills, and they know that the culminating task will be a persuasive essay.
o For students’ motivation and interest in the topic and academic contents, the teacher added extra material and resources: -video clips,
photographs, illustrations and an article by UNESCO.
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o All the lesson components are organized and presented systematically to the class, especially in terms of both the academic content, and
language knowledge.
B) Delivery of the lesson: the formal lesson plan
Class: Grade-ten
Class Description:
- In this English class there are grade-ten students, and they are mostly at high intermediate levels of language learning.
-They are all Urdu speaking; there are sixteen- males and fourteen-females in the class.
-Three male students and four females’ students are at the beginning level of high-intermediate level of language proficiency.
-Students are motivated and inspired because their intentions are to pursue for university education.
–Teacher focuses on academic content and English-language skills.
-Teaching grade- ten is the first experience for this English teacher.
Topic: Ancient civilizations of the Indus Valley: “Mohenjo-Daro”
Time: 90-minutes (two periods of 45-minutes)
Content Objectives:
-Students are encouraged to analyze the pattern of similarities and differences between modern-day town planning and ancient town planning (6000BCE, a Bronze-age).
- Students will analyze why related ruins are in danger of extinction; the possible causes are: the environment, people themselves, any other natural
forces.
-The teacher will review new-words presented an associated article with meaning and their word-roots; the teacher will make the content
comprehensible for English learners.
Language Objectives:
-Students are distributed in small groups of four pupils; they will discuss various concepts presented in the article, read it loudly with class-mates, and
take notes from the reading and the video presented in the class on Mohenjo-Daro.
--The teacher will encourage the students to use Internet resources to discover more educational material and informational texts that could be used
for reinforcement arguments in a writing essay.
- The teacher will tell the students that an eight-page persuasive essay will be the final submission.
Key vocabulary:
Cockerel, ritual, mound, Pleistocene, silt, spanned, invasive, hypocaust, carved, jasper, ithyphallic, strands, beads, salinity, crumbled, settlements,
erosions, postulated, flooding, statuette, trefoil, armband, pigment, inlay, yogi, deleterious, excavation, preservation, necklace, priest-king, collapsed,
dancing-girl.
Material Required:
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- A copy of the article “ Ancient civilizations of Indus valley: Mohenjo-Daro”; copy of the video viewing work-sheet, three copies of three column Tchart, three copies of adopted three columns T-chart, pictures, DVD, TV, DVD player.
Lesson Sequence:
Activity, Material, and
Timing
Interaction
Procedure
Teaching consideration
 Read Aloud
 Whole
Class
-Teacher will divide the class into group of four pupils
-Teacher will ask each member of the group to read one
paragraph loudly in class.
- Teacher will lead the talk on new words and provide hints for
root words.
-Teacher will write important vocabulary and its meaning on
chalk boards.
-Teacher will ask to sequence events presented in provided
article and outline them in note book.
- Teacher will ask the students to write content objectives i.e.
map the evaluation stage of human society, one conclusion
paragraph about the article, language structure and conditional
sentences, difference between informational text and the
literature.
- Teacher will ask the students to write the language objectives
i.e. add comprehension strategy by asking questions and
making predictions; write summaries of the topic; use
transitional phase such as “as a result etc.”; perform
communication tasks that includes retelling, asking clarification
questions etc.
- Teacher will ask the students to underline key words, and
important concepts during the reading of the article.
-Teacher will ask the students to summarize in their own words
in short paragraphs to verify students’ comprehension.
-Teacher will verify the students’ understanding of key words.
-Teacher will tell the students that this lesson will continue for
-Teacher will encourage the students to
participate in class.
-Teacher will check if students understand
the article and its topic.
- Teacher will ensure that students are
getting the meaning of new vocabulary and
terms used in article i.e. “urban settlement”
or “settlement”.
15-minutes
 Articulated lesson
objectives
Chalk, Chalk-board
15-minutes
 Whole
Class
- Teacher will check for students’
understanding of content and language
objectives.
-Teacher will check for understanding of
key words.
-Students will be able to differentiate
between past and present events of history.
-Student will sequence and organize outline
of the topic essay.
-Students will be able to record ideas in a
graphic organizer and link them to the main
idea of the topic.
-Students will able to summarize the topic
in a short summary orally or by writing a
passage.
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 Accessing Prior
Knowledge and pretesting
 Whole
Class
10-minutes
 Viewing Video Clip
TV, DVD, DVD Player
Copies of video viewing
sheets
 Whole
Class
- Teacher will ask the students if they have any question about
what they saw in the video
- Teacher will provide feedback, clarification and explanations
regarding misunderstandings about the topic.
-Teacher will distribute three columns T-chart and three
column adopted-Chart.
-Teacher will explain headings, and ask the students to use jot
notes to complete the chart.
 Whole
Class
-Ask the student to complete the chart for home work.
-Teacher needs to inform students that there is a chart that
they will fill lout in class for next class.
45-minutes
 Assign Home-work
5-minutes
Assessment:
two days.
-Teacher will show the pictures of an ancient city: MohenjoDaro to the class.
- Teacher will ask the class what safety problems a ruin are
facing.
-Teacher will record key words from students’ contributions:
erosion, threats, settlements, ancient city of Indus civilization,
Bronze age, etc.
- Teacher will help the class to summarize main ideas of the
article on the chalk board like: the ruins are being abandoned
due to lack of care, natural climate changes, undergroundwater salinization.
- Teacher will provide enough time for the
whole class to view pictures, and video,
then think about the questions posed.
-
-Teacher will give sufficient waiting time to
students if they pose any questions.
- Teacher will check sufficient
understanding about instructions delivered
and then move further with lesson.
-Teacher will arrange a conference with
students who have low academic content
profile, or beginners of high-intermediate
level for their adopted work-sheet.
- Teacher will check the students
understanding of home-work expectations.
Formative assessment (ongoing):
“It is a diagnostic techniques with a range of formal and informal assessments procedure employed by a teachers during the learning process in order
to modify teaching and learning activities to improve the students achievements.”
Check for students’ participation and interest in the class activities.
Check for students’ comprehension of the concepts and key vocabulary and the instructions.
Check performance–based tasks (completion of video viewing work-sheet, three columns T-Charts.)
Summative assessment:
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Culminating Tasks: a passive essay, how human activities become a threat for the abundance of Bronze Age archaeological site in
Indus valley?
C) Analyzing a lesson (Reflection and Next steps)
What Worked?
- Students were engaged in the article “Ancient Civilizations of Bronze Age: The Civilization of Indus Valley; Mohenjo-Daro”
–Teacher was able fully to articulate the content and language objective clearly to the students.
– The adopted work sheet, three column T-chart and video viewing work sheet were well received and understood by the students.
What did not Work?
Problems
--Teacher did not anticipated that students would have so much difficulty
understanding new words like “settlements” and “contemporaneous”
-- Selection of pictures on this archaeology site “Mohenjo-Daro” did not
activate the prior knowledge in the minds of the students because they had
not heard about the site before.
-- Teacher now realizes that all activities in class involved whole class.
Solutions
- Next time it would be better to introduce the key words first to the class.
- Set aside a time to use a vocabulary acquisition strategy such as examining
root-words and posting in-class word-chart.
-Ask the students to record the words in their note book and placed them in
class words wall.
-Next time it is recommended to use topic relates to local history and culture.
- It would help students to understand questions and actively participate in
class discussions.
-Teacher should have asked small groups to share the information with the larger
group.
_ Teacher will scaffold learning by writing short synopses of the video.
-Teacher shortly realized that student did not understand many words and
- Students could have worked on the video in a smaller group and should
concepts in the video.
have prepared their own word list
-If teacher showed too much video at a time, it was hard for students to grasp -Teacher could have used a guided–viewing approach by pausing the video
the content knowledge?
at key concept points to check students’ comprehension.
-Teacher realized that students do not have enough time to complete most of -Teacher planned too many activates for one lesson and did not anticipate
the T-charts.
some activities would have taken longer.
-Teacher did not have time to check the comprehension knowledge of the
-Next time, the teacher will slow things down to see if students understand
students
new concepts.
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Three Column T-Chart
Name: ________________________________________
Topic: _________________________________________
K
W
L
What I know
What I want to know
What I learnt
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Adopted Three Column T-Chart
Name: ________________________________________
Topic: _________________________________________
Issues
A.
B.
C.
Views/Position
Illustrations/Quotions/Positions
1)
1)
2)
2)
3)
3)
1)
1)
2)
2)
3)
3)
1)
1)
2)
2)
3)
3)
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Video –Viewing -Worksheet
NAME: __________________________________________________
CLASS: _________________________________________________
TOPIC: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
VIDEO TITLE: _____________________________________________
Before –viewing
DATE: _________________________________________________
During –viewing
After-viewing
List everything that you know about the topic Briefly note new information that you hear Write a brief summary and three key
before viewing the video
and see during viewing
questions
Write a one- sentence main idea statement: ___________________________________________________________
Record why this information is important to remember: ____________________________________________________
Write three possible quiz questions: ________________________________________________________________
Write a brief summary: ____________________________________________________________________________
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