Today I spent the day with another teacher planning lessons that would reach our English learners in the classroom. And, honestly, I feel very accomplished because even though we did not have enough time to plan for the entire year ahead, I was able to share my knowledge of strategies that can be used and he was very open to and creative adapting them. And we have a solid base for the units that are coming up.
Which brings me to today’s topic – lesson planning. I remember when I was just starting out as an ESL teacher, I would hear everyone talking about lesson planning but wasn’t entirely sure what that entailed. And even when I took my Master’s classes, it was assumed that we knew what a lesson plan was until the actual class on how to prepare a lesson came about.
For the longest time, I felt insecure about my own planning because I didn’t know whether I was doing it right.
With time and practice though, I learned that in order for a lesson to be effective, it does have to follow a few logical and meaningful steps. Every lesson should include the following:
Background building/review
Explicit instruction and ample modeling for your students
Practice together with the students (a.k.a. guided practice)
Practice with peers
Assessment
And what I have found worked best for me is following the SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) method.
If you have never heard of it before, SIOP integrates content and language instruction and follows 8 steps from lesson preparation to delivery to assessment and incorporates a variety of scaffolds to reach English learners at multiple levels. And if you are teaching in a similar situation like me, you probably have an absolute beginner, an early intermediate and an early advanced student in the same classroom/group.
In this blog post, I will break down the 8 steps of the sheltered instruction protocol as well as will provide a simple explanation what each of them entails.
Preparation
Background building
Comprehensible input
Teaching strategies
Interaction
Practice and application
Delivery
Assessment
Step 1. Preparation
When you teach English learners, you likely encounter multiple levels and different subjects. In order to prepare your lesson you need to consider the following:
- What are your objectives? There should be an objective for language learning and for content learning. For example, a language objective could be something simple like using new vocabulary in creating their own sentences. A content objective for, say, social studies, could be labeling a timeline of a historical event using key dates and vocabulary.
- What materials will you need? It is essential to present information to students in a way that they can understand. Using pictures, photos, real-life objects, reading materials of different levels, video and presentations, texts in the students’ native language, notes, etc. will help your English learners get to where you want them to be.
- Think about what activities you could use to deliver your lesson that would make learning meaningful.
Step 2. Building background activity
This is important for all students but ESSENTIAL for your English learners. Think about it: if I were to deliver a history lesson on Grunwald Battle of 1410 assuming that you know where it happened, why it happened, who was in it and who won, would you get a lot out of my lesson? Probably not.
Building background could be something simple as asking a question: “Do you know who/where/what ____________is?” It can also be a short video that gets the students thinking and leads into a discussion about your topic.
It should also include instruction of key vocabulary that the students will need in order to comprehend the lesson.
Step 3. Comprehensible input
What is that? you may ask. It sounds a bit more technical than we’d like but it essentially means that your students should be able to understand the gist of what is being taught. How do you achieve that?
It is important to remember that the students may know all the words but may not understand the meaning of what you are talking about (this happens ALL THE TIME!). So a lesson is best delivered at the level that is just a tad bit above where your students are. Our brains work at their best when the material is not too easy and not too hard – we then feel we are progressing. Provide them with opportunities to use visual clues, graphic organizers, repeat your information in multiple ways and have them ask for clarification. This will help them understand more of what is required of them.
Step 4. Teaching strategies
Think about what strategies you could use to get your point across. Think about your objectives for the lesson. Would sorting words, sentences or pictures work for it? What about think-pair-share? Will you use TPR (Total Physical Response) or possibly students will be assigned to work in pairs or groups? Some strategies work better for comprehension, others elicit explanations. The most important thing though is to use a variety of strategies to reach all of your learners.
Step 5. Interaction
I already mentioned in my other blog posts and I am sure you know it – we learn a language so we can communicate. It is super important for English learners to use the target language and demonstrate their understanding. If they can tell you what they learned and explain it, then you did good. Constantly using the language in a variety of situations stimulates acquisition and therefore working in pairs or groups as well as cooperative games work wonders for English learners.
Step 6. Practice and application
A good lesson is one during which the teacher is not only delivering but also allowing the students to practice and apply their newly learned knowledge. If you are working on vocabulary, the students could use the new words in their own sentences. If you are working on scientific concepts, such as cold front vs. warm front in a unit on weather, students can draw and label pictures and explain them to you.
Step 7. Follow how you deliver your lesson
It is important for the teacher to observe how the students are responding and to see that they are engaged most or all of the time. You are the one that knows your students best, so pacing your lesson appropriately and allowing time for response is crucial.
Step 8. Assessment
Last, but not least, comes the assessment. You can assess students individually or as a whole group. Whether it’s noticing and making a comment to yourself (or in writing in your plan book), or asking the students to fill out an exit ticket (with a question such as “what did you learn today?”) or a short quiz – in order for you to productively proceed into the next lesson, it is very important to note what worked and what didn’t as well as provide feedback to your students so they know.
And there you have it, the essential components of SIOP.
This turned out to be quite a long post, so in order to save time and to allow you to process the information, I am stopping here for today.
HOWEVER, in my next blog post I will show you an actual lesson plan template and how you can implement it in with your English learners! So keep your eyes peeled and I will see you next week!
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